Antitrust Feds Run Count Up To 21 Guilty Pleas In Ongoing Probe Into Atlanta-Area Foreclosure Sale Bid Rigging Racket

From the U.S. Department of Justice (Washington, D.C.):

• A Georgia real estate investor pleaded guilty [] for his role in bid-rigging and bank fraud conspiracies in connection with public real estate foreclosure auctions in Georgia, the Justice Department announced [].
  
  Otto Gogolin admitted that he agreed not to bid against other real estate investors at certain public real estate foreclosure auctions in an effort to subvert the competitive process. Additionally, according to court documents, Gogolin and his co-conspirators defrauded banks that owned the mortgage notes. Gogolin admitted to participating in the conspiracy in Forsyth County, Georgia, from July 2008 to December 2011.
  
  According to court documents filed in this case in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, the conspirators artificially suppressed the prices of properties sold at certain public real estate foreclosure auctions by agreeing not to outbid one another and then made and received payoffs to each other.
  
  Among other methods, the conspirators allegedly held secret “second auctions” of properties they had obtained through rigged bids and then divided the auction proceeds that otherwise would have gone to pay off the mortgage and other secured debt holders and, in some cases, to the previous owner of the foreclosed home.
  
  Including the charges filed against Gogolin, 23 defendants have been charged in connection with the department’s ongoing investigation into bid rigging and fraudulent schemes involving real estate foreclosure auctions in the Atlanta area, 21 of whom have either pleaded guilty or agreed to plead guilty.
  
  In addition to the cases filed in Georgia, the Antitrust Division has recently filed similar cases in Alabama, North Carolina and California. More than 100 defendants in total have been indicted or have pleaded guilty for rigging foreclosure auctions and lining their own pockets at the expense of banks and homeowners going through foreclosures.

Source: Georgia Real Estate Investor Pleads Guilty to Bid Rigging at Public Home Foreclosure Auctions.