An 18-month investigation led to indictments against 41 people and four companies. The defendants are alleged to have engaged in real estate transactions to purchase 453 homes in Ohio with fraudulent loans totaling $44 million.
Uri Gofman, Beachwood, Ohio, is alleged to have orchestrated one of the nation’s largest mortgage
Continue Reading...
Robert P. Copeland, 47, Marietta, Georgia, was sentenced by United States District Judge Beverly B. Martin to serve over 10 years in federal prison on a charge of wire fraud, relating to a $40 million investment fraud scheme.
Copeland was sentenced to 10 years, one month in prison to be followed by 3 years of supervised release, and ordered to pay restitution of
Continue Reading...
Brian H. Madden, 55, Greenlawn, New York, was indicted on charges that he misappropriated and embezzled over $4.7 million of escrow, client, and other operating funds from three title insurance agencies that he controlled and operated in New York. The three-count Indictment returned by the Grand Jury adds a money laundering charge to the wire fraud and insurance fraud charges for which Continue Reading...
County prosecutors suspected former San Bernardino County Assessor Bill Postmus committed real-estate fraud and tried to conceal a $100,000 payment for helping facilitate a $102 million county settlement…
Veronica Sanchez Gallegos, 28, Ventura, California, a licensed real estate agent, pled guilty on August 6, 2009, to one felony count of theft from an elder, five felony counts of grand theft, and admitted a special allegation of taking more than $500,000.
In an investigation conducted by the District Attorney’s Office Bureau of Investigation, it was determined that Gallegos conducted
Continue Reading...
386 mortgage foreclosure consultants have been threatened by possible criminal and civil prosecution unless they post $100,000 bonds and register with California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr.’s office. Additionally, more than two dozen companies were ordered to justify suspicious loan modification claims made in “slick advertising,” online and through the mail.
Brown has sent letters directing 386 mortgage foreclosure consultants to register with his office within 10 days and
Continue Reading...
Joseph D. Milanowski, 48, Las Vegas, Nevada, the owner of a Nevada investment company who misappropriated over $50 million of client monies to fund loans for his own pet projects, entered a guilty plea to one count of wire fraud before Chief U.S. District Judge Roger L. Hunt and was released on a personal recognizance bond pending sentencing. In pleading guilty,
Continue Reading...
Stephen LaLonde, 42, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was charged in a two-count Information for his role in a mortgage fraud closing scheme that resulted in the theft of more than $1 million in loan proceeds.
According to the July 19, 2009, criminal information, LaLonde stole more than $1 million at real estate closings as part of a scheme to defraud legitimate borrowers, lenders, and
Continue Reading...
Douglas Lee Carter, 63, Marco Island, Florida, who posed as a billionaire and a real estate tycoon, was arrested on a felony warrant charging him with scheming to defraud three people in separate real estate deals in Collier County, Florida. According to media Continue Reading...
Operation Loan Lies, a coordinated national law enforcement effort to crack down on mortgage modification scams, involves 189 actions by 25 federal and state agencies against defendants who deceptively marketed foreclosure rescue and mortgage modification services.
“These con artists see the high foreclosure rates as an opportunity to prey on people in distress,” Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz said. “They promise to rescue
Continue Reading...
