Ten Mississippi residents have been charged in a multimillion-dollar mortgage fraud scheme, officials said late last week.
Patrick McGee, Thomas Griffin, Edward Young and Fransene Berry were charged in a 12-count indictment with conspiracy and mail fraud charges involving 30 allegedly fraudulent mortgage loans totaling more than $10 million, U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton and Guy Robinson of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service said last Thursday.
Leroy Garrett was charged in a separate 6-count indictment with mail fraud charges involving five allegedly fraudulent mortgage loans totaling just under $2 million, officials said. Kelvin Brooks was charged separately in a 3-count indictment with mail fraud charges involving two allegedly fraudulent loans totaling over $500,000, according to officials.
The other defendants, Marvin Dawson, Anthony Burroughs, Lyndon Posey, and Tellis McLin, have all agreed to waive indictment and be charged by information, officials said.
Dawson and Burroughs are charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud involving 30 allegedly fraudulent mortgage loans totaling more than $10 million, Posey is charged with mail fraud involving three allegedly fraudulent mortgage loans worth approximately $1.4 million and McLin is charged with mail fraud involving one allegedly fraudulent mortgage loan worth $343,000, officials said.
All of the defendants are being charged in connection with an alleged mortgage loan fraud scheme arising out of the buying and selling of houses mostly located in Madison County, Miss., according to officials.
According to the indictments and informations, the defendants were buying and selling the same property on the same day, officials said. While “flipping,” or selling a property very soon after purchasing it, is not necessarily illegal, in these cases, inflated appraisals, were involved, according to the legal documents, officials said.
McGee, Burroughs, Griffin, McLin, Posey and Garrett would purchase homes most of which cost from $200,000 to more than $600,000, officials said. Young and Berry allegedly provided inflated appraisals to the lenders allowing the homes to be “flipped,” either to unsuspecting buyers or to one of the co-conspirators participating in the scheme, according to officials.
Dawson, operating as Premier Mortgage, brokered nearly all of these loans between the lenders and the borrowers, according to officials. The defendants would then allegedly divide the profits from the “flip,” which ranged from a few thousand dollars to several hundred thousand dollars on each property, officials said. Brooks was accused of being involved in purchasing at least one of these properties from these defendants and is also charged with mail fraud involving another home unrelated to the current defendants, officials said.