Exotic Dancer "Strips" Lenders Of $4.9M In Twin Cities Straw Buyer Scam

In Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Pioneer Press reports on Monday's announcement of the 25-count complaint of racketeering and theft by swindle against Universal Mortgage Inc. of Brooklyn Park, company president Donald Walthall, loan officers Marlon Pratt, Rahmeen Underwood and Andre Bellfield, and Cleveland Fields:

• The stripper was buying houses like crazy. On Jan. 13, 2006, Irene Thomas, then a 22-year-old exotic dancer in St. Cloud, bought a $275,000 three-bedroom home in the Willard-Hay neighborhood in Minneapolis. Over the next three months, she went on a home-buying spree, picking up nine more houses - including one in St. Paul - at sale prices totaling more than $2.1 million.

For more, see Mortgage scheme stripped lenders of $4.9 million (Brooklyn Park firm, employees charged in mortgage fraud).

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