Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Judith Hooper Pleads Guilty In Georgia Mortgage Fraud

Former Fugitive Last to be Convicted

Judith H. “Judy” Hooper, a/k/a “Jerry Dale Hunter,” 55, pleaded guilty to charges of mortgage fraud, obtaining false Social Security numbers and conspiracy.  Hooper is scheduled for sentencing on July 27, 2005, at 10:30 a.m.

Hooper was indicted on the charges on May 13, 2004, along with former closing attorney Chalana C. McFarland, 35, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and 11 other co-defendants in a mortgage fraud scheme based in the Atlanta area. The defendants were charged with wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy, all related to a multi-million dollar mortgage fraud scheme.

According to the indictment, from mid-1999 through March 2004, McFarland, and the other defendants, with the assistance of Hooper, defrauded financial institutions and other mortgage lenders by submitting false qualifying information and false documentation to obtain mortgage loans, using the U.S. Mail and various wire transfers of qualifying information and scheme proceeds. The indictment alleges that the defendants, as a group, conspired to either use stolen identities and false Social Security numbers, or to pay straw borrowers to obtain mortgage loans with falsely represented employment, income, assets and liabilities. The scheme, which involved the flipping of residential properties primarily in the Mountain Oaks, North Shore, Southland and Waters Edge Subdivisions in Lithonia and Stone Mountain, Georgia, and other residential properties in Douglasville, Elberton, Fairburn, Griffin and Atlanta, Georgia, involved mortgage loans totaling approximately $20 million.

Hooper was a former mortgage broker who allegedly changed her identity to “Jerry Dale Hunter” and arranged for loans to be originated through the mortgage brokerage firm, “American Mortgage Exchange.” Hooper is also charged in a separate indictment with causing false statements to be made to the Social Security Administration to obtain a Social Security number in the identity of a then two-year-old male child and using that fraudulently obtained SSN to open a Citizens Trust Bank account to receive proceeds of the mortgage fraud scheme. Hooper fled the country in mid 2000, when lenders began to suspect fraud, and the investigation began. Hooper fled to Belize, then Canada, and other locations outside the United States for approximately five years.

McFarland was convicted on all charges after a four-week trial in January 2005 and is scheduled for sentencing on June 28, 2005.  A total of 10 defendants have pleaded guilty in the scheme. Charges were dismissed against the remaining two defendants.

mortgage fraud