Oscar Torres pleaded guilty to participating in two separate mortgage fraud conspiracies that involved bank losses of over $20 million.
As a result of his guilty plea, Torres faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in federal prison on each of the two counts.
According to the plea agreement, Torres was the owner and operator of a real estate business called Realty Alliance LLC as well as a mortgage brokerage company called Synergy Lending Group. In addition, he was also the co-owner of a title agency called Title Executives of Broward Inc.
The first conspiracy began in June 2006 and lasted nearly one year. Torres said the goal of this scheme was to sell condominium units at The Arbors at Carrollwood, a 390-unit complex based in Tampa. During the timeframe of the conspiracy, The Arbors was in the process of being converted from an apartment complex into a condominium complex.
The developers hired Torres’ companies to sell condo units at The Arbors. To entice buyers to purchase these units, the conspirators offered unlawful cash payments to prospective tenants, either before or after closing. These cash payments were concealed from the lenders that were funding loans to individual buyers.
Meanwhile, Torres and his co-conspirators directed their fraudulent activities at Corus Bank and other FDIC-insured and non-FDIC insured mortgage lending businesses to influence them to approve millions of dollars in mortgage loans. To induce them to approve loans for the purchase of the condo units at The Arbors, the conspirators made material misrepresentations and omitted facts from purchase and sale agreements, Uniform Residential Loan Applications, and on the HUD-1 Settlement Statements.
The fraudulent statements included the property’s actual purchase price, the buyer’s intended use of the property, the buyer’s employment, gross monthly income, assets, liabilities, bank account balances, the source of downpayments and closing costs, and the actual disbursement of the loan proceeds at the closing.
Because of these false statements, the scammers caused the lenders to fund more than $15 million in mortgage loans.
The second scam Torres pleaded guilty to also happened during the summer of 2006 and continued through March 2007, following a similar pattern to The Arbors scheme.
Torres conspired with others to execute a scheme to defraud financial institutions to sell condominium units at The Preserve at Temple Terrace in Tampa. Like his other scam, this complex was being transformed from apartments to condos and Torres was hired to sell the units.
Torres and his co-conspirators marketed The Preserve units with a series of “buyer’s incentives,” including a rental income guarantee, property management at no additional cost, payment of homeowner’s association fees, limited escrow deposit due at closing, and a 3% closing cost credit.
In reality, the conspirators enticed buyers by offering cash payments. For each transaction, the enticements amounted to thousands of dollars paid in cash to buyers before and after closing, totaling over $1 million. These payments were concealed from lenders through the use of a shell company called Capital Property Investments LLC.
Even through the second scam, Torres submitted bogus statements on mortgage-related documents given to lenders. In this scheme, the lenders who financed the purchase of condo units at The Preserve sustained a loss of approximately $5.6 million.
