Sunday, November 02, 2008

The "Bonnie & Clyde" Of Mortgage Fraud?

Bloomberg News reports on the story of Eve Mazzarella, a former up and coming Las Vegas real estate agent until, along with her morgage broker husband Steven Grimm, were slammed with a bank fraud and conspiracy indictment by the local Feds.
  • Prosecutors say the pair recruited fake -- or ``straw'' -- buyers to apply for loans to purchase 227 properties worth $107 million. They told the straw buyers they would pay the mortgages. Then they skimmed thousands of dollars from each of more than 432 transactions, the indictment says, stashing the cash in 80 bank accounts.

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  • If prosecutors are right, Mazzarella and Grimm were the Bonnie and Clyde of mortgage fraud -- among the greediest of a band of swindlers who took advantage of lax lending standards at profit-hungry banks, which stopped verifying income and assets for even questionable borrowers.

For more, see Maid-Turned-Realtor Ran Vegas Mortgage Scam, Prosecutors Say.