Title Agent w/ Dubious Past Accepts Incarceration 'Buy-Down' Deal After Pleading Guilty To Forging Closing, Recording Documents In Real Estate Transactions, Failing To Record Mortgages; Judge Scraps Six-Month Jail Sentence, Gives Her 4-Month 'Weekend Warrior' Duty Instead After Fully Paying Off Restitution

In Ontario County, New York, WHEC-TV Channel 10 reports:

• A Webster woman will spend each weekend over the next four months in the Ontario County Jail after being sentenced for her involvement in a mortgage fraud scheme that took place more than six years ago.
  
  As part of the sentence agreement, Ontario County Court Judge William Kocher mandated that defendant Janet Leigh Faticone, 51, of 705 Mackenzie Court, pay back the money she illegally obtained or receive a six-month jail sentence.
  
  Faticone paid the restitution in full, a total of $3,736.50, which resulted in the judge opting for the lesser penalty of four months in jail that will be served on weekends. The Webster woman was additionally given five years of probation.
  
  Faticone faced a slew of charges, including residential mortgage fraud, falsifying business records and grand larceny, after an investigation that included the work of the FBI, the New York State Department of Financial Services' Criminal Investigation Unit and Ontario County sheriff’s deputies.
  
  During the course of the year-long investigation, it was discovered that in November and December 2009, doing business as Liberty Title Agency New York, Faticone forged several documents using the alias Janet Bixby during the closing process of three mortgages on properties in the town of Phelps, Canandaigua and Canadice.
  
  Faticone failed to record two of the three mortgages with the Ontario County Clerk’s Office, deputies said.
  
  It was further discovered that Faticone, under Liberty Title Agency, forged the Ontario County clerk’s recording page and title insurance documents to produce to the banks funding the mortgages, according to deputies.
  
  It isn’t the first time Faticone has faced charges of fraud.
  
  In 2005, Faticone pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and was sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison by United State District Court Judge David G. Larimer, according to court records.
  
  A criminal complaint filed on Jan. 31, 2005, by Michelle Mann, in the Western District New York Court, states that Faticone, the owner of Pogal Title Agency Inc. located in Rochester, was arrested along with Denise A. Strollo, a mortgage broker, and Ronald DiPonzio, an employee at Pogal Title.
  
  In the complaint, Mann, a U.S. postal inspector, states the trio had executed a scheme to defraud approximately 100 customers of Strollo who were attempting to obtain mortgage loans as well as the various lenders who provided the loans.
  
  The scheme in 2004 involved charging Strollo’s customers with false and inflated expenses, which they did by falsifying settlement statements, Mann stated.
  
  Those statements are required to identify the actual costs and expenses associated with a mortgage loan. The trio would split fraudulently received proceeds after closing.

Source: Webster woman receives jail sentence for mortgage fraud scheme.

Thanks to Bill Collins at Frontier Abstract & Research Services in Rochester, NY for the heads-up on the story.