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Kakabelly Esq.
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Posted: Sun Oct 18th, 2009 04:25 pm |
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I will post link in a bit.
NY Prosecutor after 32 people in queens - fraudsters
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Kakabelly Esq.
Admin
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Posted: Sun Oct 18th, 2009 04:27 pm |
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Federal prosecutors announced charges on Thursday against 41 lenders, lawyers and others in the real estate industry who they said used fraud to obtain more than $64 million in loans connected to more than 100 residential properties in New York State.
An investigation involving the F.B.I., the Secret Service, the New York State Banking Department and other agencies led to the wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy charges against the lawyers, mortgage brokers and loan officers, who engaged in complex plots that operated over a period of years, said Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York.
“The fraud schemes alleged in the cases unsealed today reflect a veritable smorgasbord of scams,” Mr. Bharara said during a news conference in Lower Manhattan. “Whether the economy was going up or the economy was going down, these alleged fraudsters were working feverishly to game the system.”
Mr. Bharara said that the investigation, which he called Operation Bad Deeds, uncovered eight separate cases in which people were accused of obtaining loans through fraudulent means by falsifying mortgage applications, flipping properties and stripping equity from properties.
The targets of the fraud included desperate homeowners who were having difficulty making mortgage payments or facing foreclosure, Mr. Bharara said.
On Thursday, 32 people surrendered or were arrested in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina, prosecutors said. Four others had been charged previously, and five more were still at large.
Prosecutors said that the largest scheme involved eight people connected to a mortgage brokerage firm in Queens called GuyAmerican. Among them were Peggy Persaud, a loan officer for the GuyAmerican Funding Corporation, which arranged loans from banks, and Ravi Persaud, a lawyer. The two Persauds — between whom there is no known relationship — and the others are accused of fraudulently obtaining $23 million in loans involving 44 properties.
The indictment said that the defendants in that case recruited straw purchasers to buy homes in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, sometimes looking for owners who were desperate to sell. They then resold those properties at inflated prices to other straw buyers, arranging for the new buyers to obtain loans using fraudulent information.
Ms. Persaud received hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions based on the fraudulent loans, the indictment said.
Once the second straw buyers obtained loans, some money was transferred to bank accounts controlled by two lawyers, Mr. Persaud and Cheddi Goberdhan, who were hired to represent the lenders, the indictment said. Later, those lawyers issued payments to the straw buyers and others involved, according to the indictment.
After taking control of homes from the first straw buyers, the defendants sometimes continued to flip the properties to other straw buyers, obtaining additional fraudulent loans in the process, the indictment says.
Eventually, prosecutors said, the defendants would strip all the equity from the homes, putting them through sham transactions and saddling the properties with enormous debt.
In another case involving a Bronx real estate company called MTC, 10 people were accused of participating in a $5.6 million “foreclosure rescue” scheme in which they sought out troubled mortgage holders facing foreclosure, running radio ads in which they presented themselves as saviors.
An indictment said that the defendants in that case, including the chief of MTC, Lavette M. Bills, duped troubled homeowners into selling their properties at low prices or persuaded them to transfer the deeds to their homes, promising to help solve their financial problems and then return the properties.
Instead, prosecutors said, Ms. Bills and other defendants flipped those properties to straw buyers at inflated prices subsidized by unaffordable loans that the defendants persuaded lenders to issue based on false documentation.
In response to a question from a reporter, Mr. Bharara said he could not confirm or deny whether investigators would look at the banks that issued loans based on false information.
“This office has a tradition of looking at institutions and executives of institutions,” he said. “And we will go wherever the facts lead.”
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nandypark
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Posted: Mon Oct 19th, 2009 07:47 pm |
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| Jail them crooked sku&%$$ts for life... Blasted leeches, bloodsuckers and parasites.
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ketch_im
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Posted: Sun Oct 25th, 2009 03:50 pm |
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hhhhhmmmm.....
I hope they have a good defence 
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ketch_im
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Posted: Sun Oct 25th, 2009 04:07 pm |
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Kakabelly Esq. wrote: confirm or deny whether investigators would look at the banks that issued loans based on false information.
They should ....collusion from the inside .....
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