Jacksonville Foreclosure Rescue Operator Dodges Another Bullet As Prosecutors Drop Criminal Charges

In Jacksonville, Florida, The Florida Times Union reports:

• Prosecutors have dropped mortgage fraud charges against a man accused of skimming home equity from distressed homeowners. The case against Thomas Cuomo could not stand in the wake of an e-mail and paper trail showing the mortgage company he was working with wasn't the victim of fraud - but instead the possible cause of it.

• Cuomo, who once was a housing counselor for the Jacksonville Urban League, bought homes from people in foreclosure. At one time, he was suspected of skimming out what equity had been built up and renting them back to the original owners, promising them a chance to buy the houses back.(1)

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• April Charney, an attorney at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and one of the nation's experts in foreclosure law, is defending one of the foreclosures on behalf of the tenant, Lester Thomas, who sold his house to Cuomo. Thomas still lives there because the bank has not been able to prove it has the right to foreclose on it.

For more, see Charges against man accused of fraud dismissed (He was suspected of skimming equity from distressed homeowners).

(1) Reportedly, he was first charged in 2007 with money laundering and mortgage fraud after state investigators found similar stories from nearly a dozen people in Duval and Clay counties. That case was dismissed on a technicality. In 2008, he was charged again, this time accused of taking out fraudulent loans.