Federal officials say mortgage scammers are hitting financially desperate families across the region at an alarming rate. Here are a few samples of alleged scams run in the region in the last year:
n Earlier this month, federal prosecutors indicted eight members of an alleged “foreclosure reversal” scheme that netted more than $35 million between 2004 and 2007, calling it the largest scam in Maryland’s history. According to prosecutors, the group would tell homeowners heading toward foreclosure that their houses could be saved from the bank by signing over titles for one year, during which time a more favorable mortgage would be obtained using the fraudulently inflated credit of “straw buyers.”
But the homes were never returned, prosecutors said. Instead, the properties were stripped of equity and foreclosed upon.
– On Wednesday, an Upper Marlboro lawyer and three alleged co-conspirators were indicted on charges of being involved in a “lease/buy back” program that promised homeowners headed toward foreclosure their homes could be saved if they handed over their title and paid rent while the conspirators obtained a more affordable mortgage. But the group pocketed the rent, prosecutors said, and either sold the homes out from under the owners or allowed them to foreclose. They netted at least $3 million, federal officials estimate.
– Last month, an Alexandria man pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia for obtaining nearly $4 million in mortgage loans after providing lenders with false loan-payoff statements and other fake documents so he could repeatedly gather cash on two Virginia properties. He had the mortgage checks sent to fake addresses and used the funds as an investment in businesses that he owned.
– A Maryland woman was sentenced in the District of Columbia U.S. District Court in May 2007 for using fake buyers to boost property values and defraud banks of mortgages, a scheme that netted more than $5 million between 2002 and 2003.
