BOSTON – The president and founder of a Falmouth mortgage company was sentenced yesterday in federal court in Boston in connection with defrauding the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) out of approximately $2.5 million.

Robert Pena, 69, the president and founder of the now-defunct mortgage company, Mortgage Security, Inc. (MSI), was sentenced by U.S. Senior District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf to 32 months in prison, two years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $2.5 million in restitution to Ginnie Mae. In October 2017, Pena pleaded guilty to an indictment charging him with one count of conspiracy and six counts of wire fraud. 

The charges arise out of Pena’s scheme to defraud Ginnie Mae, a government-run corporation charged with making housing more affordable by injecting capital into the U.S. housing market. Ginnie Mae, which is part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), guarantees the timely payment of principal and interest to investors in bonds backed by government-sponsored mortgage loans, such as those offered by the Federal Housing Administration and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. 

MSI contracted with Ginnie Mae to pool eligible residential mortgage loans and then sell Ginnie Mae-backed mortgage bonds to investors. MSI was responsible for servicing the loans in the pools it created, including collecting principal and interest payments from borrowers, as well as loan payoffs, and placing those funds into accounts held in trust by Ginnie Mae, which would ultimately pass them along to investors. Among other things, Ginnie Mae required issuers like MSI to provide regular reports to Ginnie Mae concerning the status of the loans in the pools....