A Maryland mortgage broker pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud in connection with two separate schemes that resulted in lenders losing over $2 million.
According to his plea, Emeka Udeze was a licensed mortgage broker who worked at various companies including Newgate Mortgage and EWA Mortgage. He admitted to submitting
The first scheme ran from 2006 through December 2008 in which Udeze worked with Shola Balogun, the owner of Newgate Mortgage, to contact individuals who were interested in purchasing a house. These buyers typically had low to moderate incomes and provided the conspirators with their actual income and employment information.
Meanwhile, Udeze and his co-conspirators fraudulently altered this information in order to secure the loan from a lender. Furthermore, the scammers profited from these bogus transactions by collecting origination fees, commissions, yield spread premiums and broker’s fees from each loan that closed.
A second scheme took place form May 2009 through January 2010. During this scam, Udeze worked with Niesha Williams and others to buy and sell real estate on behalf of individuals so they could improperly obtain money from the transaction.
Similar to the first scam, Udeze and Williams submitted fraudulent loan applications—in which multiple versions were created—of settlement statements to deceive lenders, lien holders, buyers and sellers. Also, the conspirators arranged for proceeds from mortgage transactions to be disbursed to shell companies created by Udeze in order to hide where the money was going.
The plea also says that co-conspirators failed to make required disbursements of settlement funds to preexisting lien holders, instead funneling the money to themselves.
In some cases, no mortgage payments were made and the properties went directly into default. Conversely, some borrowers attempted to make their mortgage payments for a period of time until they could no longer afford to do this.
As part of his plea agreement, Udeze will be required to pay restitution of more than $2 million that was suffered by the mortgage lenders as a result of the 20 transactions Udeze brokered during this fraud scheme.
Udeze faces 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine for the two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
