California Loan Officer Pleads Guilty To Kickback Scheme

Renato Gonzales Quiazon of Hayward, Calif., pleaded guilty to fraud charges arising from a loan kickback scheme. Specifically, Quiazon pled guilty to one of the 11 counts of wire fraud and four counts of filing false tax returns. Quiazon is alleged to have devised a scheme to fraudulently obtain payments of loan kickbacks, commissions and cash outs/extraneous line items from borrowers' escrow accounts. Beginning about January 2000 through October 2004, the defendant was employed as a loan officer with New Century Mortgage in Emeryville, Calif. During this time, Quiazon entered into an agreement with an independent mortgage broker to use his name and broker's license on loans that the defendant processed as the loan officer. By using the mortgage broker's identity on these particular loans, New Century Mortgage issued a 1% commission (1% of the total loan amount) to the mortgage broker. As part of the agreement with the mortgage broker, the mortgage broker was to retain 20% of the commissions and pay Quiazon a kickback of 80% of the commissions, he admitted. In contrast to his arrangement with the mortgage broker, in about 2002, the defendant started to get the commission checks directly and forged the mortgage broker's signature on the back and deposited the checks into his bank account. Quiazon also filed false individual income tax returns for the tax years 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. The defendant admitted he deducted expenses that did not exist and failed to report the loan kickbacks and other payments that he received which totaled approximately $430,661 for the period under investigation. New Century did not respond to requests for comment.