Former mortgage loan officer faces fraud, forgery counts

An Indiana loan officer faces a dozen felony counts after being accused of altering borrower information while working as an originator for two different lenders. 

State officials filed charges against Laura Mickler in Delaware County circuit court, located in the Central Indiana town of Muncie, in early July. She faces four felony counts each of fraud, counterfeiting and forgery. 

Mickler's alleged crimes occurred between 2017 and 2023 when she served as a loan officer at Ruoff Mortgage and Movement Mortgage, with legal action taken after federal regulators found several instances of likely fraud on approved transactions. She resigned from Ruoff after the company brought up the infractions, with her former employer later filing suit against her.

The official investigation revealed fake checks, forged signatures and phony bank statements tied to Mickler.

Among the fraudulent activity investigators discovered was inflated borrower asset values. In one of Mickler's loan approvals, a customer's bank account savings was listed as totaling $10,000, but investigators later discovered the borrower had only $5 in her name. The customer claimed the $10,000 disclosure had been falsified.

Similar reports of false asset values appeared in a different Mickler origination at Ruoff, while another of her approved purchase applications mentioned a client's car payments were being made by his employer. That claim was later also proven to be incorrect.

Following her resignation, Mickler moved to Movement in late 2022, where she similarly approved loan documents that grossly misrepresented actual asset values. The court filing noted a Movement origination that showed a homebuyer with over $5,500 in cash held at his bank, almost seven times more than the true amount. 

Since leaving Movement in 2023, Mickler has worked for local Indiana nonprofits and launched her own business as a self-proclaimed mindset coach and yoga studio owner, according to her Linkedin profile.  

The defendant was arrested on July 8 and posted $60,000 bail. Her next court appearance is scheduled for Aug. 11.

In the previous 2023 court case, Ruoff sued Mickler for "intentional, negligent and fraudulent acts to enrich herself." The company estimated at the time that the required repurchase of the loans in question would exceed $1 million. 

Both parties later settled and voluntarily agreed to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning the same case could not be retried.