March 5th, 2010 at 1:03pm
A real estate agent and her father are accused of money laundering, conspiracy and grand theft in Bakersfield and are wanted on outstanding arrest warrants of $1 million each.
Augustine Ramirez applied for loans for five homes in less than two months, indicating on each loan application that the homes were to be his principal residence, according to prosecutors in the District Attorney’s Office. The sellers paid Ramirez kickbacks for purchasing the homes at inflated rates, which he then allowed to go into foreclosure without ever making a payment. One of the homes Ramirez purchased was originally bought by ex-Realtor Carl Cole and his wife Rebecca for $361,500 in September 2004. The Coles sold the home to Crisp and Cole Real Estate within a few months, then to Crisp and Cole agent Justin Eddleman, who re-sold it to Ramirez for $949,000 in December 2006.
As should be obvious, the buy-and-flip schemes that Ramirez and others accused in real estate fraud and mortgage fraud were made possible by questionable property value appraisals.
Although only Augustine Ramirez’ name appears on loan documents, it is alleged his daughter was present at the time the loan documents were submitted and they both received the proceeds.
Read the full article in KGET TV 17, Bakersfield Now and the Bakersfield Californian.
March 5th, 2010 at 12:43pm
County prosecutors issued an arrest warrant last week for a man accused of bilking an 89-year-old Pacifica woman out of nearly $600,000.
Fetuu Tupoufutuna has fled the country in the face of allegations he conned an 89 year-old woman in Pacifica out of almot $600,000. Tupoufutunas has been charged with nine counts that include elder fraud by a caretaker, forgery and a great taking allegation, according to San Mateo County Deputy District Attorney Melissa McKowan.
The victim, Pauline Reade, was tricked into signing loan documents for $312,000 by Tupoufutuna, who met her while doing minor repair work on her home. The home, in which Mrs. Reade lived since 1951, was going to be foreclosed upon as a result. Reade was a widow who had no close contacts, which made her an attractive target by criminals. visually impaired.
Read the full article in the San Mateo Daily Journal.
March 5th, 2010 at 12:28pm
Despite evidence to the contrary, appraiser Kirksey J. “Mark” Newton Jr. will not lose his appraiser’s license as the result of complaints against him to the California Office of Real Estate Appraisers (OREA).
Newton had been an appraiser for the now-defunct Crisp and Cole real estate brokerage in Bakersfield and their mortgage brokerage business, Tower Lending. Crisp and Cole is still under federal investigation for possible mortgage fraud, and both David Crisp and Carl Cole had their real estate licenses revoked by the California Department of Real Estate (DRE) in 2008.
Appraisers Gary Crabtree and his son-in-law James Henderson had filed complaints against Newton with OREA, citing multiple instances of appraisals in which Newton had ignored close comparable sales in favor of ones farther away from the subject property, allegedly to be able to manipulate the valuations. The two whistleblowing appraisers indicated disappointment that Administrative Law Judge Samuel Reyes allowed Newton to keep his license even though Real indicated there were “multiple violations of USPAP (Uniform Standards for Professional Appraisal Practice) rules and requirements, including repeated violation of some of the provisions.”
Per Crabtree: “The judge ruled there were multiple violations … including competency, ethics and multiple violations of standards, and in spite of the fact that the respondent has been appraising for over 16 years,” he must learn the “very basics” of real estate appraisal”.
Anyone new to this story can read more on the California Real Estate Fraud Report by searching for “Crisp” or “Cole” in the search box.
Read the full article in the Bakersfield Californian.
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:42pm
This is the story of an attorney who is about to lose his right to practice law.
The California Bar Journal reported that Christopher Lee Diener (#187890) is being charged by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office with one count of conspiracy to commit grand theft, 116 counts of grand theft by false pretenses and one count of perjury. Prosecutors allege that Diener, Stefano Joseph Marrero and Terrence Green Sr. set up a loan modification business using the names Home Relief Services, LLC; US Loan Mod Processing, HRS Communications, the Diener Law Firm and Diener Law Group. Marrero and Green were the managing partners and Christopher Diener was the attorney.
Marrero and Green promised borrowers in default that they could facilitate loan modifications in 90 days if the borrowers made advance payments (illegal in California) to Diener. California Attorney General Jerry Brown has filed a claim for civil penalties against all three men, who have also received a desist and refrain order from the California Department of Real Estate to forbid them from soliciting new clients.
Read the full article in the California Bar Journal.
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:31pm
An elderly man is the victim of elder financial fraud, according to authorities in Riverside, who say that Gary Lee Wickham embezzled more than $120,000 from the 90 year-old. Wickham is accused of conning the victim by issuing him promissory notes that were never performed upon.
Four additional victims have reported to police that they were scammed by Wickham, and authorities are searching for more.
Read the full article in the Press Enterprise.
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:24pm
Two men operating a real estate fraud scam together may have lost everything with one being charged with murdering the other.
Reginald Robinson is accused of murdering his business partner, mortgage lender Kasmir Billon, in order to avoid having to split the spoils of their combined real estate fraud and mortgage fraud. Prosecutors allege that Billon and Robinson schemed to over-appraise townhouses that would be sold to straw buyers using loans written by Kasmir Billon. Billon was found shot to death, a bullet in his heart, in his BMW 745 in April 2008.
Read the full article in the Silicon Valley Mercury News.
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:16pm
A 3-year old fee imposed on real estate transactions in Kern County has resulted in a jail sentence to 37 year-old Primo Feliciano Jacquez, who pleaded no contest to one count of grand theft by pretense.
Here’s the kicker: two articles below in this blog, Kyle Grasso, convicted of helping to defraud Lehman Brothers Bank and others of $13 million, was sentenced to one year and a day in prison. Jacquez, who was accused of scamming seven investors out of $385,000 in 2007, will be sentenced next month to two years and four months in prison in addition to having to pay restitution.
Read the full article in the Bakersfield Californian.
March 2nd, 2010 at 12:19pm
Merced County District Attorney Larry Morse has been running a real estate fraud unit since 2009. They are also working with a joint team comprised of real estate fraud investigators from federal, state and local investigators that was also created in 2009 by the FBI to combat fraud in the Central Valley. Fraud cases that span multiple counties are prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office; those that are restricted to Merced County are prosecuted by Morse’s office.
DA Morse notes that “While our local economy wrestles with the financial fallout from a real estate depression and thousands of homeowners are wracked with worry about losing everything, others have seized on an opportunity. Those of us in law enforcement know all too well that in every tragedy there are criminal profiteers that will seek to exploit the misery of others.”
Merced, like the rest of the country, is battling crimes from the real estate fall-out ranging from vandalism, squatting, tagging and metal stripping/theft as well as ongoing loan modification fraud and scams.
Read the full article in the Merced Sun Star.
March 2nd, 2010 at 12:04pm
Kyle Grasso, a central figure in the Beverly Hills real estate fraud and mortgage fraud conspiracy that captured headlines and temporarily resulted in his enrichment at the expense of Westside property owners as well as contributing to the fall of Lehman Brothers Bank, received a sentence of only a year and a day in jail. Grasso was also ordered to repay a portion of the $13 million restitution that was determined to be the losses for the crimes he and his co-conspirators committed. Grasso was convicted of conspiracy, bank fraud, loan fraud and money laundering.
U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson imposed the sentence. Inexplicable to me is how Judge Pregerson could refer to the sentencing as “difficult” because “Mr. Grasso is fundamentally a decent person. Sometimes people make stupid decisions.” Yes, Judge, but fundamentally decent persons don’t conspire to steal $13 million. It is only logical to assume that Grasso and his mortgage fraud gang would have stolen more if they hadn’t gotten caught.
No wonder there is so much real estate fraud and mortgage fraud: judges feel badly about sentencing criminals but not for the havoc their crimes wreaked on the local real estate market.
** Now for a truly macabre twist: Syd Leibovitch, owner of Los Angeles-based Rodeo Realty, sent out an announcement to Realtors two days ago that he has hired Joseph Babajian, the former partner and real estate agent who was also charged in the Beverly Hills mortgage fraud but was the only one who was acquitted of the approximately dozen charged. Why anyone would want to brag about hiring Babajian or even think it is a good idea has many of us who have remained scandal-free scratching our heads.
Read the full article on CBS News.
March 2nd, 2010 at 11:39am
The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, aka FFIEC, is a federal interagency organization which is “empowered to prescribe uniform principles, standards, and report forms for the federal examination of financial institutions by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRB), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and to make recommendations to promote uniformity in the supervision of financial institutions.”
The FFIEC has just updated its white paper on mortgage fraud and deterrence. Important topics for consumers and financial professions are its chapters on reverse mortgage fraud (a new addition), as well as property flipping fraud, short sale fraud, loan modification fraud and other schemes.
Read the FFIEC white paper on The Detection and Deterrence of Mortgage Fraud against Financial Institutions. There is also a link to the white paper on the blogroll to the right of this column.
To learn more about the FFIEC, click here.
