Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Minnesota Title Closer Charged With Illegally Pocketing $220K+ By Paying Her Family Bills Out Of Real Estate Closing Funds

From the Office of the County Attorney for Dakota County, Minnesota:
  • Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom announced that Kuntee Singramdoo, age 49 of Lakeville, has been charged with five counts of Theft and three counts of Theft by Swindle (all felonies), in connection with the theft of over $220,000 while she worked as an independent closer for a Burnsville title and real estate company.

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  • Singramdoo admitted to the Department of Commerce that she embezzled her client’s funds by issuing checks for her own benefit and her licenses were suspended in March of this year. She claimed to have had overwhelming personal debts for which she used the embezzled funds.

According to the County Attorney press release, the investigation revealed that Singramdoo used several methods to accomplish her thefts:

  1. she would write checks for her personal bills or bills of other family members as part of a real estate closing and then enter those payments directly on mortgage forms as if the obligation was owed by the buyer or seller in the transaction;
  2. she would accurately prepare documents for purposes of real estate closings and subsequently change the forms at a later date to reflect fraudulent payments; and
  3. she would issue valid checks for payment as part of closings, but would never tender them to the payee and would subsequently reissue the checks to pay her own or her family member’s creditors.

For the entire press release, see Lakeville Woman Charged in Thefts Exceeding $220,000.

For the criminal complaint filed in this case, see State of Minnesota v. Singramdoo.

Go here, Go here, Go here, Go here, and Go here for other stories of trust account / escrow account theft of funds. EscrowRipOffKappa