A loan officer, a certified public accountant, two members of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club and four other defendants have recently been indicted by a federal grand jury for a $10 million mortgage and money-laundering scheme that defrauded financial institutions.
According to the indictment, the defendants allegedly conspired to receive fraudulent mortgage and refinancing loans in order to acquire real estate properties within the San Francisco area in Sonoma, Santa Rosa, Petaluma and Healdsburg between 2006 and 2007. The conspirators were supposedly using these properties to grow marijuana, the indictment said.
The scheme involved recruiting straw buyers to obtain mortgage loans in exchange for money. The loans were originated by creating falsified bank statements that contained inflated balances and deposit cases, fictitious employment history and false income information for borrowers.
Some of the loans were greater than $1 million, the indictment said, and would not have been funded by the lenders without the inaccurate documents. The properties for these loans eventually defaulted and were foreclosed upon by the lenders.
Jacob Moynihan, who owned Xanadu Global Investment, was the loan officer in this case. He also worked at numerous brokerage firms during the time of this scheme including Universal Mortgage and Sales, Onyx Capital Property and Investment and Accelerated Funding and Realty.
Jerry Mays was the CPA in this scam who created phony tax returns and employment histories for the straw buyers, while Raymond Foakes and Josh Leo Johnson are members of the Sonoma County chapter of the Hells Angels. The other conspirators who were indicted for their involvement in this scheme were Jacob's father Gerald Moynihan, Desiree Maclean, Justin Batemon and John Greco.
Seven of the eight defendants have already been arrested and are scheduled to appear in court on Nov. 8. Mays is the only defendant who has not been caught.
The defendants are facing a possible sentencing of 20 and 40 years in prison for this scheme.
