Mortgage Broker Gets One Year For Role In DC-Area Sale Leaseback Equity Stripping Foreclosure Rescue Scam

From the Office of the U.S. Attorney (District of Columbia):

• Rasheeda M. Canty, a former mortgage broker, has been sentenced to a one-year prison term for her role in an extensive mortgage fraud scheme involving properties in the District of Columbia and Maryland, [...].

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• The judge also ordered her to pay $339,643 in restitution. Canty also must forfeit $342,572, which represents the amounts of commissions she received from lenders on the fraudulent transactions. As part of her plea agreement, Canty agreed that the scheme led to losses of at least $1 million.



• According to the Statement of Offense filed by the government, to which Canty agreed, Canty was a mortgage broker with an office in Lanham, Maryland. As part of her job duties, Canty completed and filed, often by mail or interstate wire transactions, loan applications to financial institutions on behalf of individuals involved in real estate transactions.



• Over a two-year period starting in about April of 2005, Canty and others conspired to defraud financial institutions whose deposits were insured by the FDIC for the purpose of influencing the financial institutions to approve mortgage loans. She and others perpetrated this scheme by identifying distressed homeowners whose properties in Washington, D.C., and Maryland were facing imminent foreclosure and offering to purchase their properties.



• The conspirators told some of the homeowners that they could repurchase their properties within one year. Canty prepared fraudulent letters to have derogatory information deleted from the sellers’ credit reports so that their credit scores would be increased, thus allowing the sellers to qualify for the re-purchase of their properties.



• The conspirators then sought unsophisticated individuals, with good credit scores or credit scores that could be fraudulently raised, to act as “straw purchasers,” also known as “credit partners,” for these transactions, often in exchange for a $5,000 to $10,000 fee to the straw purchaser for the use of his or her personal information to purchase the respective property.



• The straw purchasers understood that one of the conspirators would make the monthly mortgage payments, and the straw purchaser would not be otherwise financially responsible for the property or required to live there. On some occasions, the conspirators used the identification of innocent, unknowing victims to make these purchases.

For the U.S. Attorney press release, see Maryland Woman Sentenced to One Year in Prison For Her Role in Extensive Mortgage Fraud Scheme (Defendant Submitted Fraudulent Information to Obtain Loans).

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

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