Among the crimes being committed by mortgage employees and real estate finance executives are mortgage fraud, embezzlement and misallocation of customer funds.
Among 11 defendants sentenced by a federal judge during the last week of October was Florida mortgage banker Jonathan Glucker, who was ordered to spend a year in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida. Glucker and his co-conspirators were charged with conducting a mortgage fraud scheme over a 10-year period.
Former Wachovia Bank financial specialist Mary Novak Thompson was sentenced on Oct. 2 to a single day in prison for providing false verifications of deposit to National City Mortgage in support of a mortgage fraud scheme operated by Timothy Scott Brooks and Adam Spruill, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia announced. Thompson, a 25-year banking veteran, has been barred from the banking industry for a decade.
Hours before fleeing to Beirut, Lebanon, Christopher J. Warren brazenly posted on his company’s website that he was responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent mortgages, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District Of California said in a press release (Docket #: 2:09-cr-121-JAM). One of the victims was Taylor Bean and Whitaker Mortgage, which was defrauded out of around $7.4 million. In all, the government said lender losses were $19.8 million.
Warren was arrested with tens of thousands of dollars hidden in his boots when he tried to enter the United States from the Canadian border in February 2009. He pled guilty in January of this year, and was sentenced to 14 years and seven months in prison on Sept. 11.
An Aug. 24 announcement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Mississippi indicated that Henry E. McCaslin Jr. was sentenced to 63 months in prison. McCaslin admitted in March that he embezzled from First National Bank while he was president and chief executive officer. He was ordered to pay $1,530,000 in restitution.
Jeffrey C. McLendon was indicted in May for alleged theft between 2009 and 2011 while he worked for McLendon Mortgage Co. and Greater Ohio Mortgage in Zanesville. He allegedly received cash and check payments to McLendon under the guise of credit repair, application fees and appraisal fees. On Oct. 15, McLendon pled guilty in Common Pleas Court, WhizNews.com reported.
Gloria and John Sanders were caterers who turned to Ann Elizabeth Ursiny and her defunct company Trace Financial Resources Corp. for a $1.65 million loan to purchase a church in Westminster, Colo., and convert it to an event center, the Palm Harbor Patch reported. But Ursiny pleaded guilty to deceiving the couple and collecting $1.4 million in payments from them without providing the financing.
A loan officer at High Point Mortgage in San Antonio, Texas, Tiffany Ann Kiser, was charged with using the bank and credit card accounts of a prospective borrower to pay her cable television bill and make a down payment on a car, the San Antonio Express-News reported on Sept. 18. John Lopez, who owns High Point Mortgage, reportedly said that Kiser had been fired months earlier.
Wells Fargo Home Mortgage fired Richard Eggers in July after a background check revealed that Eggers spent two days in jail in 1963 for putting a cardboard cutout of a dime in a washing machine. The West Des Moines Patch reported in October that Wells Fargo, which terminated Eggers as required by Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. regulations, was rejected in its offer to rehire Eggers.
