Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Presidential Pardon Purchase Possible As Bush Gives Pass To Developer Convicted In Mortgage Scam Screwing HUD While Daddy Gives $28K To RNC

On Long Island, New York, Newsday reports:
  • Isaac Robert Toussie, the Brooklyn developer who served time in prison for masterminding a massive Suffolk real estate scam, was pardoned by President George W. Bush yesterday, effectively wiping his criminal record clean.

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  • Toussie pleaded guilty to charges in two separate cases. In one, he admitted in 2001 that he had made false statements to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, pleading guilty to a count of falsifying loan documents that illegally qualified about 100 home buyers for the HUD-backed mortgages.

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  • [Isaac Toussie's father] Robert Toussie donated $28,500 to the Republican National Committee this year, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

  • The pardon shocked and outraged lawmakers and homeowners, some of whom who say they were victims of the Toussies. "In a climate where foreclosure is at its highest in history ... this guy who contributed to that foreclosure gets a pardon?" said Maxine Wilson, 42, one of five who filed [a civil lawsuit] on behalf of 400 home buyers.(1)

  • "It's almost as if our pain and our hurt and our hardship really doesn't matter," added Wilson, who moved to Atlanta in 2006. "Some rich kid whose dad can buy his way out of anything can get it erased as though it never happened, as if we're so insignificant it didn't matter."

For more, see Bush pardons man involved in Suffolk real estate scam.

For story update (12-25-08), see:

(1) According to the story, a civil lawsuit is pending in federal court claiming homes built by the developers were shoddy and overpriced.

posted by Home Equity Theft Reporter at 12:44 PM