Utah TV Sports Anchor Pleads Guilty In Mortgage Fraud

In Provo, Utah, the Deseret Morning News reports:

• A television sports anchor has pleaded guilty to communication fraud Tuesday and agreed to testify against others in what officials are calling a multimillion-dollar fraud and conspiracy ring. Dave Fox, anchor/reporter for Channel 2 news, and Mark Atkin both pleaded guilty Tuesday in 4th District Court, signing a plea agreement in which they admitted that in April and January of 2006, the men signed loan papers to get homes that they said they would live in but never actually intended to. The plan was to buy the homes and turn them around and sell them as quick investments.

• As part of [a] plea deal, Atkins and Fox ... agreed to testify against other individuals involved much more deeply in the alleged housing conspiracy ring. [...] The ring — which allegedly involves real-estate appraisers, mortgage brokers, title insurance agents, investors and in some cases the homeowners — is working together to defraud mortgage companies out of millions of dollars by artificially and fraudulently inflating the values of the homes, then trying to sell them.

For more, see TV sports anchor pleads guilty, will testify in fraud.

For story update, see KUTV's Fox apologizes for mortgage fraud, will return as sports anchor (10-12-07).