Ex-Mortgage Broker Cops Fraud Plea In D.C.-Area Straw Buyer, Sale Leaseback Foreclosure Rescue Scam

From the Office of the FBI (Washington, D.C. Field Office):

• Rasheeda M. Canty, a former mortgage broker, pled guilty [...] to engaging in an extensive mortgage fraud scheme involving properties in the District of Columbia and Maryland, [Federal authorities] announced [Friday].

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• From about June of 2005, Canty and others conspired to defraud financial institutions whose deposits were insured by the FDIC for the purpose of influencing the financial institutions to approve mortgage loans. Canty and others conspirators perpetrated this scheme by identifying distressed homeowners whose properties in Washington, D.C., and Maryland were facing imminent foreclosure and offering to purchase their properties. The conspirators told some of the homeowners that they could repurchase their properties within one year.

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• The conspirators would then seek out unsophisticated individuals, with good credit scores or credit scores that could be fraudulently raised, to act as “straw purchasers,” also known as “credit partners,” for these transactions, often in exchange for a $5,000 to $10,000 fee to the straw purchaser for the use of his or her personal information to purchase the respective property.(1) [...] In furtherance of the conspiracy, Canty obtained financial information from the straw purchasers which she then falsified in order to qualify the applicants for their mortgage loans.

For the entire FBI press release, see Maryland Woman Pleads Guilty to Her Role in Extensive Mortgage Fraud Scheme.

(1) According to the FBI, the straw purchasers understood that one of the conspirators would make the monthly mortgage payments, and the straw purchaser would not be otherwise financially responsible for the property or required to live there. On some occasions, the conspirators would use the identification of innocent, unknowing victims to make these purchases.