Man Sentenced for Using Grandma’s Good Credit to Obtain Mortgages

Jeremie Sheneman, 34, College Point, New York, was sentenced by Judge Jon DeGuilio to 120 months imprisonment and 3 years of supervised release after being found guilty of the felony offenses of wire fraud after two jury trials. 

As previously reported by Mortgage Fraud Blog, Sheneman was indicted in September 2010 with 3 counts of wire fraud and again in October of 2010, with his father Michael Sheneman, with 4 counts of wire fraud in a separate scheme. According to documents filed by the government in these cases, Sheneman defrauded mortgage lenders by causing false and misleading information to be used on mortgage applications. He used his grandmother’s name and good credit score to obtain $4.5 million in mortgage loans for real estate in Chicago, California and New York.

In the second scheme, Sheneman convinced people to buy houses, primarily from Michael Sheneman. Jeremie Sheneman completed mortgage applications on behalf of those buyers that contained lies about their financial situations. These false statements enabled the buyers to obtain mortgages and buy the houses, and Michael and Jeremie Sheneman received the profits.

These charges were filed as the result of an investigation by the Northern Indiana Bankruptcy Fraud Working Group. The members ofthe Northern Indiana Bankruptcy Fraud Working Group include representatives of the UnitedStates Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana; Office of the United States Trusteefor Indiana and Central Illinois and Southern Illinois (Region 10); Federal Bureau ofInvestigation; Internal Revenue Service; United States Postal Inspection Service; and Social Security Administration, among others. The U.S. Trustee Program is the component of the Justice Department that protects the integrity of the bankruptcy system by overseeing case administration and litigating to enforce the bankruptcy laws. This case was prosecuted byAssistant United States Attorneys Barbara Brook and Jesse Barrett.