The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said four mortgage loan officers and a title agent will be prohibited from doing business with the government due to their criminal convictions in a mortgage fraud scheme.
The deal involves three South Florida mortgage loan officers and a Pittsburgh, Pa., title agent who defrauded elderly borrowers, mortgage lenders and the Federal Housing Administration.
Marcos Echevarria, Louis Gendason, John Incandela and Kimberly Mackey pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for their part in a $2.5 million nationwide reverse mortgage scam, HUD said. All four are serving prison terms.
HUD’s action effectively bans them from conducting business with the federal government in the future.
Echevarria, Gendason and Incandela worked for 1st Continental Mortgage, which maintains offices in Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton, Fla. They pressured elderly borrowers to refinance their existing mortgages into an FHA-insured reverse mortgage or home equity conversion mortgage, HUD said.
Mackey, a licensed title agent and proprietor of Real Estate One Land Services, fraudulently closed the loans by failing to pay off the borrowers’ existing mortgages and concealed the fraudulent loan closings by preparing false HUD-1 settlement documents, HUD said.
The elderly victims lived in seven different states between May 2009 and November 2010.
— Kerry Curry
