Co-Owner of Legacy Lending Pleads Guilty

Mortgage fraud is no stranger to the heart land. Conspirators in the mortgage business have not confined their misdeeds to the west and east. News coming from the heartland shows that mortgage fraud is everywhere and may be right next door to your neighboring farm.

Thomas John Hunter, age 30 and Co-Owner of Legacy Lending in Minnesota along with Frederick Earle Dean, age 30 have pleaded guilty to mortgage fraud. Mr. Dean was scheduled to be sentenced on March 5th for his role in the mortgage conspiracy. Mr. Hunter pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering on March 3rd.

Mr. Hunter admitted that he was involved in over thirty seven fraudulent mortgage transactions between September of 2005 and July of 2007. Mr. Hunter stated in his plea agreement that he and others obtained loans from mortgage lenders that contained inflated sale prices that were based on inflated appraisals that they obtained from a licensed appraiser involved in the conspiracy.

Mr. Hunter and other conspirators involved obtained monies from the proceeds of the purchase transactions and attempted to hide those monies within the HUD-1 settlement statements. The mortgage applications that he and his conspirators submitted to mortgage lending institutions contained fraudulent income, asset, employment and appraisal information. The conspirators used straw buyers to obtain the properties involved. The applications were sent as if the straw buyers would be occupying the properties involved.

The scheme involved over twenty million dollars in fraudulent mortgage loans and the conspirators obtained over two million two hundred thousand dollars from the proceeds of those loans according the United States Attorney General’s Office in Minnesota.

Mr. Hunter pleaded guilty to his involvement in a property in Rogers, MN that was purchased for eight hundred twenty five thousand dollars. The conspirators obtains one hundred ten thousand dollars from the transaction.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division has been receiving assistance on the case from Taylor Trump who is current serving twenty years in prison for his involvement in the fraud scheme. Mr. Trump was sentence on August of 2008.


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