Thursday, September 18, 2008

2nd Guilty Plea In Metropolitan Money Store Foreclosure Scam

Clifford McCall, 47, Lanham, Maryland, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud in connection with a mortgage fraud scheme which falsely promised to help homeowners facing foreclosure keep their homes and repair their damaged credit.

According to his plea agreement, McCall was president of Burroughs & Smythe Financial Services, Inc., based in Lanham, Maryland, and a director of the Fordham & Fordham Investment Group, Ltd., a foreclosure consulting and credit servicing business based in Lanham and Greenbelt, Maryland.  These companies, which McCall and others incorporated, assisted the Metropolitan Money Store, located in Lanham, Maryland, in offering foreclosure consultation and credit services to financially distressed homeowners.

As previously reported by Mortgage Fraud Blog, beginning in September 2004, McCall conspired with others in a scheme to fraudulently promise to help homeowners, who had substantial equity in their homes but were facing foreclosure because of their inability to make monthly mortgage payments, avoid foreclosure and repair their damaged credit.  The homeowners were directed to allow title to their homes to be put in the names of third party purchasers (the straw buyers) for a year, during which time Metropolitan Money Store promised to improve the homeowners’ credit ratings, help them obtain more favorable mortgages, and eventually return title to their homes to them.  The homeowners were told that the equity withdrawn from the properties would be used to pay the mortgage and expenses on their homes and to repair their credit. The straw buyers were paid $10,000 to participate in the scheme.

Using the homeowners’ properties, the conspirators applied for mortgages to extract the maximum available equity from the homes.  They prepared and submitted fraudulent loan applications to mortgage lenders to obtain fraudulently inflated loans on the target properties in the straw buyers’ names.  At settlements, the conspirators imposed numerous fees and required “seller contributions” which were far in excess of industry standards; they imposed fees for services which were not performed, disclosed or explained to the homeowners; and they transferred the sale proceeds out of the escrow accounts into the conspirators’ business and personal bank accounts and converted a substantial portion of those funds to their personal use.

McCall obtained voluminous cashier’s checks in the names of straw buyers and Metropolitan Money Store employees to carry out the scheme.  McCall also agreed to act as a straw buyer and secure a mortgage loan in his own name for homeowners whose property was located in Lanham, and in return, was paid $10,000.  McCall made false statements as to personal and financial information on settlement documents.

As a result of this scheme, McCall fraudulently obtained at least $2,462,107.85 through bank and credit card accounts from 2004 to 2007.

McCall faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine for the conspiracy.  U.S. District Judge Roger W. Titus scheduled sentencing for September 14, 2009 at 9:00 a.m.

McCall is the second defendant to plead guilty in the Metropolitan Money Store mortgage fraud scheme.  Richard Allison, 37, Camp Springs, Maryland, an attorney and employee of the U.S. Census Bureau, pleaded guilty to the conspiracy on September 3, 2008 and is also scheduled to be sentenced on September 14, 2009.

United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein thanked the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Secret Service, Internal Revenue Service - Criminal Investigation and the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation’s Division of Financial Regulation Investigative Unit for their investigative work.  Mr. Rosenstein commended Assistant United States Attorney James A. Crowell IV, who is prosecuting the case.

mortgage fraud