Final Conspirator Goes Down In "MKL Financial Diet" Equity Stripping Foreclosure Rescue Scam

From the Office of the U.S. Attorney in Maryland:

• Earnest Lewis, age 52, of Takoma Park, Maryland, pleaded guilty [Wednesday] to conspiracy to commit wire fraud arising from a scheme in which he and his conspirators offered to help financially vulnerable individuals save their homes from foreclosure, and instead defrauded homeowners and mortgage lenders, announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein.

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• Earnest Lewis, Michael Lewis and Winston Thomas specifically targeted individuals who owned and had equity in their homes, but were facing foreclosure on their homes because of their inability to make monthly mortgage payments. The co-conspirators fraudulently represented to the homeowners that their “lease/buy-back program” would help the homeowners to keep their homes.

• Michael Lewis and Winston Thomas, a senior loan officer with a mortgage lender, told the homeowners that the “good credit” of Earnest Lewis would be used to temporarily refinance their homes, that they had to sign their homes over to Earnest Lewis and that they could repurchase the homes in roughly one year, or once they regained their financial footing. During the interim, they could remain in their homes by paying “rent” and fees to Earnest Lewis by having their bank accounts directly debited by an account belonging to co-conspirator Cheryl Brooke’s company “In the House Technologies.”(1)

For the entire press release, see Fourth Conspirator Pleads Guilty and Agrees to Forfeit $2 Million in Mortgage Fraud Scheme Targeting Victims with TV Ads.

(1) Earlier this week, Cheryl Brooke, age 52, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, and Winston Thomas, age 43, of New Carrollton, Maryland and Michael K. Lewis, age 57, of Takoma Park, Maryland all pleaded guilty in connection with the scheme.