Federal authorities rounded up 31 people yesterday in a sweeping crackdown on bogus local mortgage schemes estimated to have cost banks and consumers $64 million.
“It was a veritable smorgasbord of schemes,” Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said of the frauds, which involved more than 100 properties.
Each scheme had a common thread: Fraudsters pried cash from banks with fake loan paperwork that inflated a property’s value or a borrower’s personal background and income.
In all, 41 people are charged. Several not arrested yesterday have agreed to appear in court in the coming weeks or had already been arrested in other cases.
Two of the most lucrative scams targeted properties where homeowners had trouble making mortgage payments.
Peggy Persaud, of Woodmere, Queens, worked with seven accomplices to loot banks and other lenders of $23 million, the feds say.
In one case, Persaud and her cohorts allegedly bought a house from a distressed Queens homeowner for $355,000 in December 2006 and resold it in April 2007 for $680,000 to a straw buyer.
Then, using that buyer’s name, they borrowed against the house at the higher price and pocketed the proceeds.
Other suspects targeted homeowners having trouble making mortgage payments by running radio ads “to suggest they were there to help, when they were there to hurt,” Bharara said.
The lead suspect in that case, Lavette Bills, 37, of Briarcliff Manor, Westchester, worked with nine accomplices to persuade homeowners and lenders to give them control of their properties, court papers say.
Then Bills and her accomplices allegedly borrowed $5.6 million in the name of straw buyers with fake paperwork.
In all the cases, the feds say, the suspects pocketed the borrowed cash, leaving homeowners and banks in the lurch. Sometimes, even straw buyers didn’t know what was going on.
The suspects charged yesterday face up to 30 years in prison and fines that could total double the amount of money they stole.