Former Olympia Mortgage Exec Sentenced to 8 Years

Leib Pinter, a former executive of Olympia Mortgage Corp., has been sentenced to 97 months in prison for orchestrating a refinancing scheme to defraud Fannie Mae.Pinter also was ordered to pay more than $43 million in restitution to victims of the scheme. According to Benton J. Campbell, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Pinter pleaded guilty to a wire fraud conspiracy on Sept. 11, 2008. Olympia, formerly headquartered in Brooklyn, N.Y., originated and serviced mortgage loans owned by Fannie. When Olympia refinanced a Fannie Mae mortgage loan, Fannie Mae typically wire transferred the money to an Olympia bank account. Olympia was then required to pay off the underlying mortgage loan by remitting the outstanding balance to Fannie Mae. Instead, Pinter misappropriated these proceeds for the benefit of Olympia. When the fraudulent scheme was revealed, Fannie held nearly $44 million in unpaid principal in refinanced mortgage loans.