With a prison record because of mortgage fraud, a California man is accused of using a stolen identification to illegally broker loans.
Hubert Jene Turner, released from prison in September after serving nearly five years for mortgage fraud and identity theft, is back in the California courts for allegedly doing the same thing.
Turner, 36, a former mortgage broker who also goes by Kevin Turner, has been charged with stealing identification to buy houses in southern California, according to Riverside County prosecutors.
“He did it before because I prosecuted him before,” Riverside County deputy district attorney Michael Silverman told MortgageDaily.com. “He just got out of prison.”
Silverman said Turner applied for 15 mortgage loans using the man’s name and Social Security number. He used the woman’s Social Security number of open a bank account for the money he allegedly made on the scheme, Silverman said.
Turner, who knows the mortgage business from working as a broker in Santa Ana, Calif., went on the prey after a brief lull in the local housing boom last fall.
For instance, Silverman said, a house listed last September for $1 million was selling. So the buyers drop the price to $900,000. Turner would allegedly offer the higher price but then use fraudulent tactics to apply for a loan at the original price.
He was pocketing the difference, prosecutors have charged.
Turner used the scam to buy four houses totaling $2.5 million, Silverman confirmed. When arrested authorities seized nearly $123,000 from bank and escrow accounts Turner established.
All of the homes he purchased have either fallen into foreclosure or are about to, Silverman said.
Silverman said he would not comment directly on if he believes Turner will go back to jail.
“But it is rare for somebody who has already gone to prison to be convicted of another felony and avoid going back to prison,” he said.
In his last scam, which resulted in a prison sentence of four and a half years, Turner was a licensed mortgage broker. He stole a woman’s ID who had applied for a loan with him.
He took her ID and put it on the title of a house he bought for himself. Then, using doctored documents, “sold” that house so he wouldn’t have to make payments.
The house eventually went into foreclosure, Silverman said.
“This time he had somebody’s ID and went to work illegally as a mortgage broker,” Silverman said.
Silverman said prosecutors are seeing an increase in the fusing of mortgage fraud and identity theft.
“It’s something we are seeing a lot of, actually,” he said. “The crook is almost always a mortgage broker or acting as a mortgage broker. That way they can get through without a lot of questions arising.”
The schemes typically include “a lot of fake documents, false verifications of employment, doctored W-2s done on a computer,” Silverman said.
