A former attorney from Braintree, Mass., was indicted last week on charges of tax and bank fraud violations, including a fraudulent attempt to obtain a reverse mortgage loan.
John C. McBride, 64, formerly of Marblehead and Edgartown, was charged in an indictment that alleges McBride forged paperwork to secure tax assessments of more than $650,000 in federal tax liens from his properties, including an attempt to obtain a $387,000 reverse mortgage from Bank of America in 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
The indictment alleges that in early 2008, McBride “caused six false, forged, and fraudulent Certificates of Federal Tax Lien Release to be recorded against his properties, knowing that they were in fact false, forged and fraudulent, and not issued by the IRS.”
In March 2008, McBride allegedly attempted to record two fraudulent Certificates against his Edgartown property—the same property on which he tried to obtain a reverse mortgage.
In connection with the reverse mortgage application, it is also alleged that McBride provided false information concerning the liens on the Edgartown property about the status of his bankruptcy proceeding, and also caused a fraudulent and unauthorized Discharge of Mortgage in an amount greater than $700,000 on the same property.
The indictment also asserts that Bank of America discovered the fraudulent Discharge before the loan closed and no funds were disbursed to McBride.
The statutory maximum sentence for the tax offense is three years in prison, followed by one year of supervised released and a $250,000 fine, according to the DOJ. The maximum sentence for the bank fraud offense is 30 years in prison, to be followed by five years of supervised release and a $1 million fine.
Written by Jason Oliva
