Dennis Wayne Parris, Senior Vice President of Phoenix Housing Group (PHG), has been indicted in the Western District of North Carolina and charged with conspiracy to commit mortgage fraud.
According to the Indictment, the defendant, along with Roger Bailey, a PHG sales manager, Marina McCuen and other mortgage loan officers, including certain PHG salespersons, employees and corporate officers, processors, brokers and mortgage companies, allegedly executed a consumer and mortgage fraud scheme to sell PHG manufactured and modular homes to North Carolina consumers through false and fraudulent pretenses. The sales were financed by mortgage loans insured by the United States government.
The defendant and his co-conspirators knew that material information about the sales terms and the buyers’ ability to repay the mortgage loans were false or deliberately omitted and the value of land and homes securing the mortgage loans were inflated.
Parris, Bailey and other PHG officers are said to have created a culture at PHG wherein employees were compelled to generate as many sales as possible regardless of whether their customers could afford the homes they were sold. Through this scheme, Parris, Bailey and their conspirators sold over 1,100 homes to North Carolina consumers from PHG stores in Granite Falls, Burlington, Asheboro and elsewhere between April 2005 and October 2010, financed with government insured loans totaling more than $158 million, resulting in hundreds of mortgage insurance claims totaling more than $24 million and net losses to the United States presently exceeding $16 million.
The defendant has pled not guilty to the charges.
