Former LO Sentenced in Chicago Fraud Scheme

A former loan officer has been sentenced by a U.S. District Court judge to 151 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $1.4 million in restitution to various lenders for engaging in a fraud scheme involving properties located mostly in economically depressed neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side.

Fred Haywood is the last of a group of six defendants sentenced in connection with the scheme who were charged in 2008 and 2009 and subsequently pleaded guilty, and he faces the longest term of incarceration, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Haywood plead guilty last year to the scheme, conducted as he worked as an LO or processor for several difference mortgage brokerages between 2001 and 2007.

According to the FBI, among the types of fraud Haywood engaged in was qualification of borrowers for loans based on false information submitted to lenders, including false information about their income assets, employment, intention to occupy the property and source of downpayment.

Haywood and other defendants recruited the buyers by promising to pay them for acting as nominees and putting the properties in their names.

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