Friday, April 27, 2012

Real Estate Agent Pinched For Allegedly Using Client's Personal Information To Score $412K Mortgage

In East Orange, New Jersey, The Star Ledger reports:
  • Authorities have charged a real estate agent with fraud for illegally using a client’s personal information to secure a mortgage on a property, then operate her business and collect rent from the same location.

  • Sylvia Sexius, 46, was arrested [], charged with theft by deception, forgery and theft by unlawful taking, the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office announced. Authorities were alerted to the alleged crime in October, when a Newark woman reported she had been receiving foreclosure notices for an East Orange property she did not own.

  • The prosecutor’s office financial crimes unit investigated and discovered that Sexius, an East Orange-based real estate agent, had completed a fraudulent mortgage on the property for $412,000 using the Newark woman’s personal information, authorities said. Sexius, of Orange, had allegedly obtained the information after having earlier refinanced the woman’s home.

  • Sexius took possession of the property at 520-524 Prospect St., then began operating her real estate business there while also collecting rental income from commercial and residential units in the same building, the prosecutor’s office said.