Missouri Mortgage Broker Pleads Guilty To Federal Conspiracy Charge In Flipping Scam

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Bennie Clark, 33, of Lake St. Louis, and owner of World Wide Financial LLC, pleaded guilty Friday in a St.Louis Federal Court to a conspiracy charge in a fraud scheme that cost mortgage lenders as much as $1 million and could cost him up to three years in federal prison. According to the story:

• "Clark ... admitted that he and a Hazelwood man named Michael Jackson used straw buyers and rigged appraisals and financial information to inflate the prices of properties in St. Louis and St. Louis and St. Charles counties before reselling them, according to prosecutors and court documents."

The others involved in the conspiracy were: Jackson (guilty plea to a felony fraud charge; not yet sentenced), Donna Brown, an employee at Clark's firm (guilty plea in March; four years' probation and 100 hours of community service), straw buyer Robert Casey (five years probation, $132,929 restitution order), and appraiser Reginald Mays (not charged in case, but sentenced earlier to three years' probation; $2.1 million restitution order in another mortgage fraud case). For more, see Mortgage broker pleads guilty of fraud scheme.

For story updates, see:

• Mortgage lender gets 2-year prison term for fraud,
• Man is sentenced to two years for mortgage fraud.