Guilty Pleas in Reverse Mortgage Case

A pair of guilty pleas has been entered in a Georgia case where the defendants were accused of defrauding reverse mortgage lenders and the Federal Housing Administration. Kelsey Torrey Hull and Jonathan Alfred Kimpson admitted to charges that they faked the downpayment required for seniors to qualify for a purchase-money reverse mortgage. They created bogus gift letters from "relatives" for amounts ranging between $50,000 and $105,000. They also used fake HUD-1 settlement statements which purported to show the sale of nonexistent assets. The defendants provided the downpayment funds-not the senior citizen borrowers. Prosecutors said inflated appraisals were involved as well. Kimpson pleaded guilty to an additional charge of aggravated identity theft for stealing the identity of Realtors and their passwords to access the Georgia Multiple Listing Service and create fake property listings and sales at inflated amounts. Hull also was guilty of transferring properties into seniors' names to obtain reverse mortgages through the refinance portion of the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program. He diverted these loan proceeds to his shell companies. Hull faces up to 30 years in jail and a fine up to $1 million on each of the conspiracy and bank fraud counts. Kimpson faces similar jail time, plus an additional two years in jail and a fine up to $250,000 for the identity theft conviction. Both are scheduled to be sentenced on July 16.