2nd Pa. Attorney To Go Down In Alleged Scam That Peddled Bogus Sale Leasebacks That Purported To Save Homeowners From Foreclosure

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Bucks County Courier Times reports:

• Attorney and Doylestown Township Supervisor Jeffrey Bennett will plead guilty to criminal charges of conspiracy, mail fraud and wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering Wednesday in Philadelphia. [...] [Defense attorney Gavin] Lentz announced his client's intentions Monday afternoon, less than a week after Bennett's law partner - Stephen Doherty - pleaded guilty to similar charges in U.S. District Court. The pair ran Doylestown Township's Bennett & Doherty P.C.

• Bennett, Doherty and three others were indicted two months ago on charges of skimming equity from homes of owners facing foreclosure in a mortgage fraud scheme.(1) [...] The five defendants are accused of conspiring to obtain fraudulent mortgages totaling $14.6 million for at least 35 struggling homeowners, [...]. The mortgages generated money for the defendants but often cost the victims their homes.

• "(Bennett) got involved with an unscrupulous mortgage broker, that mortgage broker being Ed McCusker," Lentz said. "It's unfortunate that McCusker was as unscrupulous as he was and, unfortunately, (Bennett) was involved with him."

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• Residents involved in the program complained that, in some cases, they thought their troubled mortgages were being refinanced. But, at settlements organized by the defendants, they unknowingly signed away their properties to third parties and ended up paying rent in houses they no longer owned. The transactions did pay off the homeowners' original mortgages but, authorities claimed, the money left over - the home's equity - was divided up by the defendants.

For more, see Supervisor to plead guilty in fraud case (Doylestown Township Supervisor Jeffrey Bennett "wants to move on with his life," his attorney said).

For the indictment, see U.S. v. McCusker, et al.

(1) Also charged were Upper Makefield's Ed McCusker, head of the now-defunct Axxium Mortgage Inc., his wife, Jacqueline, and Mount Laurel mortgage broker John Bariana, the story states. foreclosure rescue equity stripping