One of the remaining defendants in the Beverly Hills mortgage fraud story that dates back 10 years and costs Lehman Brothers Bank tens of millions of dollars has been sentenced to prison.
U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson sentenced Richard A. Maize, 53, a former Beverly Hills mortgage banker, to 18 months in prison. Maize pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud, loan fraud and making a false statement on a federal tax return.
Maize, a co-founder of mortgage banking firm Americorp Funding, was central to the conspiracy, in which the other defendants either brokered their straw buyer loans to Maize, bought and sold the real estate (the Realtors®) or provided the appraisals. The fraudulent appraisals and loan applications were submitted to the victim banks. In one case, a $735,000 home in Bel Air was sold to a straw buyer for $2.37 million.
The previously sentenced defendants are:
Charles Elliott Fitzgerald, 50, of Newbury Park (168 months in federal prison)
Mark Alan Abrams, 50, of Long Beach (78 months)
Jamieson Matykowski, 37, of Laguna Niguel (18 months)
Lila Rizk, 44, of Rancho Santa Margarita, an appraiser (36 months)
Kyle Grasso, 40, of Santa Monica (12 months). Amazingly, Kyle Grasso‘s real estate license was never revoked by the California Department of Real Estate, but he allowed it to expire.
Considering the sentences Of Matikowski and Rizk, in my opinion, Richard Maize got a light sentence.
There are a number of previous posts on this blog about this massive mortgage fraud.
Read the original article in the Los Angeles Independent.