A former employee in the secondary mortgage market division of JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., has been sentenced to hard time for taking bribes.
Lynda Sanabria was previously employed at Chase in a position that enabled her to influence secondary mortgage market sales.
The job gave her access to confidential information about bids being made on loans that Chase was selling.
But instead of using that information to help her employer maximize profits — prosecutors allege Sanabria instead used to information to line her own pockets.
Sanabria is accused of providing the inside information from 2004 until 2010 to investors who would pay her bribes, according to an announcement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California.
Among those investors was Israel Hechter, owner of Ocean 18 LLC and Note Tracker Corp.
Hechter allegedly paid Sanabria $300 per loan that his firms were successful in acquiring. In all, he paid Sanabria $210,000
— including one payment for $70,000 that she used to buy a property in Lake Havasu, Arizona.
Initially, the pair reported the income to the Internal Revenue Service. But that ended in 2008 when Hechter began referring to the payments as birthday gifts or consulting fees to hide the bribery. Sanabria stopped paying taxes on the income.
Sanabria pled guilty in October 2014 and was sentenced on Monday by U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez to six months in prison and another six months home confinement. She is the third person so far to be sentenced in the case.
In addition, she was ordered to pay more than $40,000 in restitution to the IRS.
Hechter is among three people who are scheduled to be sentenced in August, while another related sentencing is scheduled for the following month.
In addition to
Sanabria, employees at GMAC Mortgage LLC and National City Bank also allegedly took bribes.
