WASHINGTON – A Miami title agent and former mortgage broker was sentenced today for her role in a reverse mortgage loan fraud scheme. Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer of the Southern District of Florida, and Special Agent in Charge Lester Fernandez of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Inspector General (HUD-OIG) made the…

NEW ORLEANS -- Based on the findings of our Eyewitness Investigation, federal authorities charged a developer whose family is a major supporter of Gov. Bobby Jindal with fraudulently billing a state Katrina recovery program. And Praveen Kailas pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit theft of government funds and one count of theft of government funds. He was charged in June and agreed to plead guilty Aug. 1. The case was unsealed…

Just as New Haven was ready to start fixing the mess a developer made of a longtime housing co-op, a judge has halted a crucial tax foreclosure sale—and may have postponed any further action for at least three more months. Superior Court Judge Michael Maronich ruled that the city may not go ahead with a foreclosure auction planned for this Saturday at the former co-op known as Dwight Gardens. The co-op comprises 80 townhouse apartments on…

RealtyTrac reported last week that Oregon is the second hottest spot in the nation for home foreclosure. And as The Skanner News went to press this week, the national Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a report faulting mortgage servicing processes – and calling out Attorney General Eric Holder for not doing enough for consumers. While many critics blame defaulted homeowners for creating their own financial problems, the issue of…

Reports of mortgage fraud declined in 2012, the first decrease in such reports since the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) started tracking them in 2002. FinCEN received 69,277 Mortgage Loan Fraud Suspicious Activity Reports (MLF SARs) in 2012, 25% fewer than the record 92,561 in 2011. In its report, FinCEN associates the decrease with an unusual spike in MLF SARs filed in 2011, which resulted from an influx of…

CHARLOTTE — An Asheboro man and a Pinehurst man are among a group working for Phoenix Housing Group who are facing potentially decades in prison and millions in fines on federal charges involving a $158 million consumer and mortgage fraud conspiracy. The announcement was made by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina on Aug. 13. Andrew B. McKeown, 38, of Asheboro and Dennis Wayne Parris, 55, of Pinehurst are among…

PHILADELPHIA – Joel Tillett, 36, of Whitehall, PA, was sentenced today to four years in prison and ordered to pay restitution of $979,562.20 in connection with a mortgage fraud conspiracy.  Tillett, the former general manager of Madison Funding, Inc., a now-defunct Allentown mortgage loan origination company, pleaded guilty on May 14, 2013 to conspiracy and to uttering and publishing false documents to obtain a loan insured by the…

The former manager of an Allentown mortgage company was sentenced Wednesday to four years in prison for his role in a long-running mortgage fraud scheme. U.S. District Judge Harvey R. Bartle also ordered Joel Tillett, 36, of Whitehall Township, to pay nearly $980,000 in restitution after he pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy and forgery to obtain a government-insured loan. According to court documents, Tillett and other employees of Madison…

SAN DIEGO – A federal grand jury has indicted San Diego businessman Michael A. Smith on charges that he engaged in an elaborate scheme to defraud the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Mesa Grande Band of Mission Indians out of $1.25 million.  According to an indictment unsealed yesterday, Smith learned that the Mesa Grande Band of Mission Indians, located in San Diego County, had access to a HUD…

An investor in a Charleston real estate development was sentenced today to time served for his role in a 2007 mortgage scheme that bilked lenders out of more than $400,000. Jason G. Haywood, who has no prior criminal history, agreed in a deal with federal prosecutors to turn over 31 villas at 1 Rice Drive in West Ashley to the banks involved. . That would enable the lenders to sell the properties and recoup some if not all of their money.…

A subprime deal came back to haunt Fabrice Tourre, a former Goldman Sachs trader, when a federal jury in Manhattan found him liable for civil securities fraud. He is not the only one feeling the pain of a subprime transaction six years on. Hundreds of thousands of subprime borrowers are still struggling. Some of their mortgages ended up in another Goldman deal that was done at the same time as Mr. Tourre was working on his own financial alchemy…

RIDGELAND — A Ridgeland lawyer has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison for fraud. The July 2011 indictment says Michael Earwood and a partner formed Kinwood Capital Group LLC, a real estate business that operated from 1998 to 2006. Prosecutors say Earwood asked the partner for money to pay taxes on Kinwood’s property, but transferred the money to another business Earwood controlled. Earwood also was accused of transferring Kinwood…

Deirdre M. Daly, Acting United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, today announced that a federal grand jury sitting in Hartford has returned an indictment charging three individuals with participating in a mortgage fraud scheme involving the purchase of more than 40 properties throughout Connecticut.  The seven-count indictment, which was unsealed today, charges FILIPPOS MILIOS, also known as “Filip,” 54, of Newington,…

Massive federal budget cuts are stealing hope from the poor, elderly and disabled. As evidence of this horrific trend, in recent months during 2013 the Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) notified 14 households that their Section 8 housing choice vouchers have been suspended until further notice. The BHA also served notice to around 200 additional households in the final stages of being eligible to receive Section 8 vouchers, that their…

President Barack Obama’s administration significantly overstated statistics from a year-long mortgage-fraud initiative, including total number of victims, their losses suffered and number of individuals criminally charged, according to an FBI memo. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, in the document sent today, asked members of the administration’s Mortgage Fraud Working Group to correct and update any public materials related to the results…

A Joliet Housing Authority official accused of defrauding the Chicago Housing Authority of nearly $200,000 with her husband’s help was drowning in debt and had filed for bankruptcy around the same time she was hired by the south suburban agency, court records show. In 2010 — just a few years after Cook County prosecutors said Charlene Potts and her now estranged spouse Scott Washington embezzled the CHA — Potts, claimed she owed more than $280,…

MOBILE, Alabama – A man who worked as a loan officer at a local mortgage company pleaded guilty today to providing phony documents to a lender to get a house loan approved for a client. Anthony Melvin Wilkes became the second Midtown Mortgage Co. employee to plead guilty to making a false statement on a loan application, and the third to be charged. Federal prosecutors bypassed a grand jury and negotiated the plea deal with defense attorney…

MOBILE, Alabama – Two more former mortgage broker employees accused of defrauding lenders pleaded not guilty to federal charges Wednesday, bringing the total number of defendants in the probe to a half-dozen. Prosecutors allege that employees who worked at Midtown Mortgage submitted fraudulent documents to the lenders in order to obtain mortgages for customers who otherwise would not qualify. Two of the defendants, Anthony Melvin Wilkes and…

MINNEAPOLIS—A federal indictment unsealed late yesterday charges a 38-year-old Maple Plain man with conspiring to defraud mortgage loan lenders. The indictment, which was filed on July 16, 2013, specifically charges Alpha Rashidi Mshihiri with one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, three counts of bank fraud, two counts of wire fraud, one count of mail fraud, and one count of money laundering conspiracy. The indictment was unsealed…

A Bayonne man pleaded guilty today to his role in a bid-rigging scheme that fraudulently obtained tens of thousands of dollars in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funds through the City of Bayonne Department of Community Development, officials said. Leo Viguie, 38, of L.V. Renovations in Bayonne, pleaded guilty to one count of the theft of $40,000 in government funds before U.S. District Judge Peter G. Sheridan in Trenton, U.S.…