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Owner
of Liberty Mortgage Convicted in Multi-Million-Dollar Mortgage Fraud - (fredericacade.wordpress.com) After a 10-day trial, a federal jury found Hoda Samuel, 60, of Elk
Grove, guilty of a conspiracy to commit mortgage fraud and of 30 individual
counts of mail fraud. According to evidence presented at trial, Samuel, a
licensed real estate broker, was the owner and principal operator of Liberty
Real Estate & Investment Company, a real estate agency, and Liberty
Mortgage Company, a mortgage brokerage business. Between April 5, 2006 and
February 26, 2007, Samuel’s companies facilitated 30 residential real estate
transactions that defrauded the lending institutions that provided the
financing. In all 30 of these transactions, Samuel served as the real estate
broker for the purchaser. In at least 15 of them, she also represented the
seller. In 29 of the transactions, Liberty Mortgage Company secured the
financing for the purchaser. At least 28 of the properties went into
foreclosure, resulting in a loss to lenders of more than $5.5 million.
Scum
Sucking Realtor Fraud Gets Five Years for Flipping Scam - (www.heraldtribune.com) Unmoved by Arthur Seaborne’s age, his health concerns or the culture of
corruption during the real estate boom, a federal judge sentenced the
70-year-old former mortgage broker to five years in prison. It was the maximum
sentence allowable under court guidelines. U.S. District Court Judge Steven D.
Merryday said he reached the decision because Seaborne’s crimes against
financial institutions and investors who attended his real estate seminars were
“particularly cold-blooded.” “You are a person — like many others I have seen —
who is well-regulated in many areas of your life,” Merryday told Seaborne. “But
in one area of your life you went terribly and unaccountably wrong, and you
visited unconscionable injury on a quite a few of people.”
How
our "public servants" serve the rich and not the public - (www.mercurynews.com) A legendary investor's sprawling estate here has sold for $117.5
million, one of the highest prices ever for a residential property in the U.S. The
sale price eclipses the previous Silicon Valley record of $100 million paid for
a Los Altos Hills mansion by Russian investor Yuri Milner in 2011 and comes
amid a red-hot market for luxury home sales in Silicon Valley and the
Peninsula. The private sale was closed in November between the owner, private
equity investor Tully M. Friedman, and an undisclosed buyer represented by SV
Projects, according to public records. And illustrating the steps the parties
took to keep it quiet, the documentary transfer tax of $129,250 was written in
pencil in a black, three-ring binder marked "Separate Tax Statement"
that is kept behind a clerk's desk at the San Mateo County
Assessor-Clerk-Recorder's Office in Redwood City. The county allows people
filing deeds to request that the tax appear on a separate document. A member of
the public who wants to see the tax must go to the office and ask for the
binder.
The
death of the mortgage broker? - (www.marketwatch.com)
Starting next year, mortgage brokers, who serve as middlemen between
homebuyers and lenders, will be subject to new rules that experts say could
push many to leave the business. Issued by the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau last week, the new rules prohibit brokers from raking in more
compensation in exchange for placing borrowers in more expensive mortgages;
they also disallow brokers from getting paid by both the borrower and the
lender on a mortgage transaction. While the rules will make working with a
broker safer for consumers, experts say they may also leave them with fewer
brokers to choose from. “It certainly does put some of the more marginal
players on the fence,” says Keith Gumbinger, a vice president at mortgage-info
website HSH.com.
Why
buy a house when you can just steal one? - (www.dailymail.co.uk) Andre Barbosa can safely say that he has one of the nicest homes on the
block in Boca Raton, Florida. But the 23-year-old Brazilian national does not
own or even rent the palatial $2.5million estate legally - he is a squatter. Barbosa,
originally from the neighboring Pompano Beach, moved into 580 Golden Harbour
Drive in July Now he is threatening to use an obscure real estate law
that allows people to claim a property as their own if they stay there for
seven years. No one witnessed Barbosa breaking into the 7,522-squae foot,
five-bedroom, six-bathroom waterfront home, so he cannot be arrested.
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