A straw buyer pleaded guilty in the Southern District of California to conspiring to commit mortgage fraud in a $5 million scheme.
Timothy Shannahan became the fourth person to admit conspiring with Kathryn Sylvester, the former CEO of Sylvester Financial Inc.
According to court records, Sylvester was responsible for recruiting straw buyers who were directed to
In his plea, Shannahan admitted to working with Sylvester from January 2007 to May 2008 to fraudulently induce lenders to fund mortgage loans. During the scam, Shannahan falsely claimed on a mortgage loan application that he earned $50,000 per month as the vice president and director of Marketing for Real Realty Solutions in order to obtain mortgages for a residence in La Jolla.
Overall, Shannahan proclaimed that he attained $400,000 to $1 million in loans in his name. Shannahan is scheduled to be sentenced in July.
Meanwhile, according to Sylvester’s indictment, she is alleged to have played a role in approximately 80 fraudulent loans on 28 foreclosed properties resulting in losses in excess of $5 million.
Other straw buyers who have entered guilty pleas as a result of this scheme include Claudia Montes, Roderick Michener and Tad Lent.
Montes is a former notary public who submitted false loan applications and transferred proceeds from these loans to Sylvester. Michener allowed his co-conspirators to claim an ownership interest in his bank account in order to falsely inflate their assets on fraudulent mortgage loan applications. Lastly, Lent also filed inaccurate loan applications to mortgage lenders by misrepresenting the amount of his assets.
