Sacramento Feds Bag Foreclosure Rescue Operator For Alleged Role In Peddling Sale Leaseback, Equity Stripping Scam That Targeted Financially Strapped Homeowners

From the Office of the U.S. Attorney (Sacramento, California):

• Sergio Roman Barrientos, 62, of Poway, was arrested [] in San Diego. On Thursday, April 14, a federal grand jury returned a six-count superseding indictment against Barrientos that added co-defendant Zalathiel Aguila, 42, of Fairfield, to the indictment originally brought on March 3, 2016, United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced.
  
  According to the indictment, Barrientos, Aguila, and Omar Anabo, 53, of Vallejo, engaged in a foreclosure rescue fraud scheme that began in September 2004 and continued to February 2008. Barrientos and Aguila are charged with conspiracy to commit and the commission of wire fraud affecting a financial institution, bank fraud, and conspiracy to make and making false statements on loan applications. On January 15, 2016, Anobo pleaded guilty to conspiring to make false statements on loan applications (case number 2:16-cr-001 GEB). He is scheduled for sentencing on November 4, 2016.
  
  According to court documents, Barrientos owned Capital Access LLC, in Vallejo, and along with Aguila and Anabo, preyed on homeowners nearing foreclosure. The defendants’ “Keep Your Home” program purported to be a temporary rescue plan whereby “qualified investors” took over the mortgages while the homeowners paid rent and worked on rebuilding their credit. It is alleged that the defendants convinced homeowners to sign over title to their homes, which were then sold to straw buyers.
  
  The straw buyers obtained loans under fraudulent pretenses by claiming on loan applications that, for example, they intended to occupy the homes as primary residences and that no part of the down payment for the purchase was borrowed. In fact, it is alleged that Capital Access provided the down payment amounts, and the straw buyers never intended to live in the properties.
  
  The defendants stripped the equity from the homes and used it to pay the operational expenses of the scheme and personal expenses. Vulnerable homeowners across California lost their homes as a result of the alleged scheme, and lenders lost an estimated $10.47 million from the fraud.

Source: Vallejo Business Owner Arrested for Alleged Foreclosure-Rescue Fraud Scheme.

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(1) For more on this type of foreclosure rescue ripoff, see:

• Criminal Prosecutions Of Sale Leaseback Peddlers In Equity Stripping Foreclosure Rescue Deals;
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• Dreams Foreclosed: The Rampant Theft of Americans' Homes Through Equity-stripping Foreclosure 'Rescue' Scams (June 2005).