Defunct Florida Title Insurance Agency Required Employees To Put In "Chinese Overtime"

The Saint Petersburg Times ran another story on the escrow scandal involving the now-defunct Gulf Coast Escrow and its owners, Cheryl L. Wehlau and her husband, John T. Wehlau. According to the story:

• Loan closers worked 12-hour days, weeks on end without time off. Processors prepared loan packages, napped on cots, splashed water on their faces, then went back to work to meet the volume of loans. [The Wehlaus] even insisted employees do what they called "Chinese overtime" -- paid not at time-and-a-half, but at half-wage.

[...]

• The Wehlaus had a secret reason for maintaining high productivity at Gulf Coast, according to state investigators: They were stealing millions from escrow accounts under their trust, laundering the cash through shell corporations and spending it on an extravagant lifestyle. The stolen funds were replaced by money coming in for new mortgage loans, investigators said, but if the flow of new money was interrupted, the scheme faced collapse.

[...]

• An audit revealed an escrow account that should have held $9.4-million contained just $1.5-million. More than $7.9-million had vanished. [...] Each was charged with 25 felonies: theft from escrow accounts, grand theft and money laundering.

For more, see Title business boomed, but the cash vanished (Life was hard but lucrative at Gulf Coast, until the owners were charged with stealing millions).

For story update, see Search for title company's millions leads to employee (Much of $7.9-million looted from Gulf Coast Title remains missing) (St. Petersburg Times - 10-11-07).

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Go here for other stories involving misappropriated or unaccounted for escrow funds.