The vice president of a D.C.-area property management company was sentenced to six years in prison for defrauding his tenants, mortgage lenders and the government out of more than $2.8 million.
Chester Ransom Jr., 45, pleaded guilty in January in the U.S. District Court in Washington to charges of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to commit mail fraud and conspiracy to defraud the government.
Recommended Stories
“These schemes required intelligence and skill to implement and maintain,” said U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen Jr. in a sentencing memo. “These crimes cannot be explained as a moment of weakness or as carelessness run amok.”
The president of the company, Bryan W. Talbott, 49, pleaded guilty to the same charges, but his sentencing has been postponed because he was arrested Thursday for allegedly violating the conditions of his release for trying to run another scam, prosecutors said.
According to prosecutors, Ransom and Talbott, who lived together on posh North Portal Drive in Northwest Washington, engaged in three schemes that caused harm to numerous victims, including a man with terminal cancer and The Russian Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas.
Through their property management company, Esquire, they managed rental properties in the D.C. area for homeowners, many of whom had jobs that took them overseas.
Ransom and Talbott collected rent payments from tenants but did not pay the bills on the properties and spent the money on themselves, court papers said. They defrauded at least 54 clients out of $1.2 million this way, prosecutors said.
In a mortgage fraud scheme, the duo filed forged certificates of satisfaction purporting to release the liens on their North Portal Drive property.
The duo then turned around and had Ransom “sell” the property to Talbott for $1.1 million, using copies of the forged lien releases. Talbott obtained a loan of $750,000, and Ransom received a check of $515,000 in the settlement.
Less than a month later, they ran the same scheme. Ransom again “sold” the North Portal Drive property to Talbott, this time for $1.25 million. Ransom received $801,000 in the settlement.
