A federal prosecutor told a jury Wednesday that the government will show that James Nassida orchestrated a massive mortgage fraud scheme at his company, Century III Home Equity, in the years before the housing-bubble collapse of 2008 and used the money to finance his fancy lifestyle.
Nassida and his sister, Janna Nassida, the former No. 2 at the defunct South Hills, Pennsylvania, firm, will be on trial before U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose for the next two weeks in a case that features some 40 witnesses and boxes of financial documents so voluminous that Assistant U.S. Attorney Brendan Conway prepared a Power Point presentation for his opening argument to keep it as streamlined as possible.
“They are guilty as charged,” Conway said of the Nassidas, as federal agents in the back of the courtroom looked on. “And we’re going to prove it.”
The case against Nassida has been building for two years as his underlings have pleaded guilty one after another in deals to testify against their old boss.
Agents with the mortgage fraud task force say Nassida, who started Century III in 1994 and at one point employed 30 people processing 700 loans a year, headed a conspiracy that used fake appraisals and other documents to fool lenders into making millions of dollars in fraudulent loans. Janna Nassida was his right-hand woman in the fraud.
Conway said the motive was greed.
He said Nassida owned a $1.3 million house, a vacation home in Seven Springs and drove high-end cars, including an Aston Martin.
“I didn’t even know what an Aston Martin was,” Conway told jurors, “but apparently it’s the car that James Bond drives.”
They can fetch over $200,000.
Conway said the Nassida motto was simple: “We do what it takes to get the loan closed.”
But whatever it takes included breaking the law, according to the government.
While Conway detailed complex mortgage deals in a presentation that lasted more than an hour, Nassida’s lawyer, Stan Levenson, focused on Nassida’s personal life and character, saying his client is an expert in his field who ran a successful company before it went belly-up in 2008.
He promised that Nassida will put up a fight against Conway, whom he called one of the best mortgage fraud prosecutors in the United States.
“He’s prepared to face Mr. Conway,” said Levenson. “Jim will be answering every question that the government has for him.”
He also said the government’s witnesses, many of them former Century III loan officers who have pleaded guilty in the last two years, cannot be trusted because they cut deals with U.S. attorney’s office.
“They all have an overwhelming reason to lie,” he said.
