A Kansas business owner faces court charges on allegations of a bank fraud scheme that forced several low-income homeowners into bankruptcy.
Harris Poulikidis, 56, of Overland Park, Kan., was indicted last week by a federal grand jury in Kansas City. He allegedly saddled victims with more debt than they could repay, causing several of them to lose their homes to foreclosure, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Todd Graves.
Poulikidis owned and operated a number of home improvement businesses, including U.S. Home Services, Roofing and Siding Plus and A+ Siding, which provided a variety of home repairs and remodeling. He also operated a number of mortgage companies, including Olympic Mortgage, C&T Enterprizes of Kansas and FP Holdings.
According to the indictment, Poulikidis, through the mortgage companies he operated, allegedly arranged financing of home repairs and remodeling projects for clients of his home improvement businesses. Allegedly, he sometimes arranged not only for payment for home repair and remodeling projects, but also for refinancing of home mortgages and debt consolidation loans for clients, according to the indictment.
The federal indictment also alleges that Poulikidis arranged financing of first mortgage loans for home improvement projects through a primary lender, without disclosing that he was also arranging for second and third mortgage loans to the borrower on the same property through other lenders. According to the indictment, the existence of a second mortgage loan was significant to the first mortgage lender in evaluating whether the borrower could make the payments required under the mortgage loans.
The indictment also alleges that Poulikidis sometimes knowingly submitted loan applications with false statements, including the amount of income earned by the borrower. As a result, according to the indictment, Poulikidis caused loans to be made to borrowers who could not afford the payments required, commonly resulting in losses to the financial institutions, foreclosure on the homes and bankruptcy of the borrowers.
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