Numerous participants in an expansive mortgage fraud scheme were sentenced to prison on Monday, October 27, 2014, and Tuesday, October 28, 2014, by Chief United States District Judge James C. Dever, III. The defendants were involved in a conspiracy to defraud numerous banks and lenders using straw buyers resulting in mortgage loan disbursements exceeding $20 million, $5 million in loan proceeds, and losses exceeding $1 million.
Shannon Egeland, a former Bend, Oregon, real estate developer who pled guilty to mortgage fraud, was sentenced on January 29, 2014, to 120 months in prison. Egeland was to begin serving his sentence on August 1, 2014, by 2 pm. However, just prior to surrendering, Egeland was shot.
Top Agent Network, Inc. filed a lawsuit against leading online real estate company Zillow alleging theft of its proprietary trade secrets to create the highly touted “Coming Soon” feature.
Derryl L. Tanner, 47, Euclid, Ohio, and Julie A. Becker, 39, Cleveland, Ohio, are the subjects of a six-count indictment charging them of engaging in a $2.1 million mortgage-fraud scheme involving a Westlake, Ohio, home.
Warren Ballentine, 43, Durham, North Carolina, an Illinois lawyer and Internet radio talk show host, was convicted on federal charges for engaging in two mortgage fraud schemes that defrauded lenders of a total of approximately $9.7 million.
Melanie Ferreira, 62, Lagrangeville, New York, was sentenced to 51 months in prison following her conviction for engaging in a series of frauds, which included cheating the Internal Revenue Service out of nearly half a million dollars, and perpetrating a bank fraud scheme wherein she caused a forged cashier’s check to pay off her mortgage.
Lawrence Foster, 49, Miami Beach, Florida, the President of Paradise is Mine, was found guilty by a federal jury of conspiring to commit wire fraud and seven counts of wire fraud, and Johana Leon, 38, Miami Beach, a corporate officer of Paradise is Mine, was found guilty of three counts of structuring currency transactions, for their roles in soliciting funds from investors promising that Paradise is Mine owned land and would use investor funds to develop the island of Rum Cay in the Bahamas, but instead used the money for personal use.
Robert Walker, 43, North Royalton, Ohio, was indicted for operating a loan-modification scheme in which he allegedly defrauded more than 90 homeowners struggling to make their mortgage payments by convincing them to pay him an upfront fee of at least $1,995 then did little or not work to obtain the modification.
Emiel A. Kandi, 37, University Place, Washington, a former hard money lender, was sentenced in U.S. District Court to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and $831,607 in restitution for structuring some hard money loans to allow him to seize control of a home if the borrower missed a single payment, in others he submitted false information to lenders regarding the borrowers’ employment, salary, and intention to live in the home.
Benjamin Bland, 39, Glen Allen, Virginia; Michael Westbrook, 36; and Anthony Simpson, 43, both of Baltimore, on charges arising from a scheme to allow individuals with poor credit histories and criminal records to obtain loans and real property using misappropriated social security numbers and fraudulently established credit histories.