Two men who operated a
According to court statements, Michael Pinkney, the owner and president of Capital Mortgage and Peanut Construction Co., and Alan Price conspired to identify foreclosed properties, recruit nominee buyers to purchase and refinance these assets, and submit false and fraudulent documents to mortgage finance companies.
Because Price was registered as an appraiser, he submitted appraisals reflecting that improvements were made to the foreclosed properties, when in reality no repairs were conducted. Therefore, these inaccurate appraisals inflated the value of the properties, which allowed more money to be borrowed against them.
The conspirators obtained loans through Pinkney’s mortgage company. As a result of this scam, the loan funding companies, CitiMortgage and Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, lost nearly $1.3 million.
An example of their scam was a Memphis property that was purchased in January 2009 for $65,000. Two months later, Price submitted an appraisal which valued the same home at $400,000 even though no improvements were made on the property since it was purchased.
Court evidence revealed that all of the properties in this scam were located in Memphis.
Both defendants pleaded guilty in April to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of wire fraud.
