Dean Rossi, 49, Warrington, Pennsylvania, was found guilty by a federal jury yesterday of bank, mail and loan fraud in connection with a mortgage scheme.
Rossi, who owned numerous low-income properties throughout the Philadelphia area, misappropriated more than $643,000 from real estate closings. Specifically, after obtaining bank loans to purchase or refinance residential properties, Rossi teamed up with corrupt title/closing agents to divert a substantial portion of the loan proceeds, and then he pocketed cash from the settlements which should have been used to pay off prior mortgages and tax liens. In addition, to prevent the scheme from being detected, Rossi continued to cause payments to be made on the prior existing mortgages years after those loans were supposed to have been paid in full.
Rossi faces a maximum possible sentence of 120 years’ imprisonment, five years of supervised release, and a $4 million fine.
The announcement was made by U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain.
“Our investigators and trial team did a phenomenal job of following a trail of evidence that goes back more than a decade,” said U.S. Attorney McSwain. “The defendant went to great lengths to cover his tracks, but due to the hard work of our agents and prosecutors, his long-running scheme was exposed.”
The case was investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Joel Goldstein.
