Three found guilty of reverse mortgage fraud scheme

Three of four people indicted in a major mortgage fraud scheme that cost its victims, mortgage insurer and lenders millions of dollars are facing serious jail time. Two loan officers and a title agent responsible for a $2.5 million reverse mortgage fraud scheme were convicted in federal court on Wednesday of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Loan officer Louis Gendason, 42, of Delray Beach, Fla is scheduled for sentencing on November 8, 2011. Fellow defendants Kimberly Mackey, 46, of Pittsburg, PA; and John Incandela, 24, of Palm Beach, FL, are scheduled for November 3, 2011. All three defendants face up to 30 years in prison. From May 2009 through November 2010, Gendason and Incandela worked as loan officers at 1st Continental Mortgage in Fort Lauderdale and Boca Rotan. According to court documents, both men solicited individuals older than 62 to refinance existing mortgage loans to reverse mortgage loans financed by Genworth Financial Home Equity. Gendason doctored real estate appraisals by inflating the value of the properties in order to qualify the borrowers for reverse mortgages. Borrowers were qualified even though they had insufficient equity for eligibility. Genworth and the FHA approved more than $2.5 million in reverse mortgage loans based on the false documentation and fraudulently inflated appraisals submitted by the defendants. Kimberly Mackey, of REO Land Services Inc. in Pittsburgh fraudulently closed the loans and failed to pay off the existing mortgages of the borrowers. Mackey covered up the fraudulent closings by creating a false HUD-1 settlement documents indicating that the existing mortgages were in fact paid off. To continue the fraud, the defendants participated in a loan modification scheme to hide the Genworth reverse mortgage transactions from the original mortgage lenders whose loans were still unpaid for. Mackey received more than $2.5 million in loan proceeds and transferred $988,086 to a bank account used by Gendason and Incandela for personal use. The final defendant in the case is Marcos Echeverria, 29, of Palm Beach, FL, who is scheduled to show up in court on August 10, 2011. Write to Matthew Torres.