A former New York football player was indicted along with six co-defendants in connection with 15 allegedly fraudulent mortgage transactions that netted around $6 million, Brooklyn officials said Wednesday.
Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes said Owen Larman, a former Canarsie High School football star and former New York Newsday‘s Brooklyn player of the year, was indicted along with six co-defendants.
The group was indicted for allegedly stealing about $6.2 million from seven different banks by falsifying documents to inflate the value of properties being sold, officials said. The allegedly fraudulent mortgage transactions were said to have taken place in the areas of Bedford-Stuyvesant Crown Heights and Bushwick, N.Y.
Larman is charged with grand larceny in the first and second degrees and forgery. Larman faces a maximum of 25 years in prison.
According to the District Attorney, investigations revealed that Larman made 33 separate fraudulent mortgage transactions dating back six years, allegedly stealing approximately $12 million.
The other defendants in the case are Micheal Nanton, an unlicensed appraiser; Louise Brown, an attorney; Joey Singh, also known as Puneet Bhalla, a former loan officer with U.S. Mortgage; Melinda Cross, a former employee of US Mortgage and Larman’s girlfriend; Delbert Baptise; and Augusta Uwechue, a title company employee, according to the District Attorney’s office.
Larman used false appraisals to boost the value of abandoned buildings and then sold them repeatedly, the District Attorney’s Office said.
Larman allegedly used childhood friends, families of friends, women that he had dated, and others in his scam, the District Attorney said. Larman would victimize these people by getting them to agree to buy a house or to act as “straw buyers,” in which case they would allow him to use their names in order to get mortgages approved, according to the District Attorney.
The lion’s share of the loan proceeds went directly to Larman, the District Attorney said. While Larman kept this money and control of the houses, these individuals’ credit histories were ruined and they owed huge debts from the loans that Larman took out in their names, according to the District Attorney
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