Fraudsters Sentenced for Operating Nationwide Home Mortgage Scam

[nitpicker]

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/fraudsters-sentenced-operating-nationwide-home-mortgage-scam

Department of Justice
U.S. Attorney’s Office
Eastern District of Virginia

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Fraudsters Sentenced for Operating Nationwide Home Mortgage Scam

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Three California residents were sentenced today to a combined 39 years in prison for their roles in a nationwide, multi-year “home mortgage modification” fraud that scammed thousands of vulnerable victims out of at least $11 million. Sammy Araya, 41, of Santa Ana, was sentenced to 20 years, Michael Henderson, 49, of Costa Mesa, was sentenced to 12 years, and Jen Seko, 36, of Anaheim, was sentenced to 7 years in prison, respectively. All three defendants were convicted by a federal jury on April 21, of multiple counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.

According to court documents, from at least March 2011 through September 2014, Araya and his co-conspirators targeted struggling homeowners and made a series of misrepresentations to induce them to make payments of thousands of dollars each in exchange for supposed “mortgage modification” assistance. The conspirators lured vulnerable victims into the scam through targeted mass mailers sent to homeowners facing foreclosure through Seko’s company, Seko Direct Marketing. In the mailers and in subsequent phone calls, the defendants and their co-conspirators falsely held themselves out as a non-profit organization or as affiliated with a real government program, the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), designed to help homeowners at risk of foreclosure. Henderson and other “customer service representatives” in the scam convinced victims to send “reinstatement fees” and “trial mortgage payments” to the conspiracy, based on the false representations that the funds would be used to modify their mortgages. In reality, however, the defendants did nothing to help modify any mortgages. Instead, they used the victims’ payments for their own personal benefit and to further the fraud scheme. Araya, the ringleader of the scam, used the fraud proceeds to purchase expensive vehicles, a racehorse, and a variety of luxury goods, as well as to fund his personal travel and a reality television show he produced called “Make It Rain.TV.”

This scheme had devastating consequences for the victim homeowners, all of whom were already in a precarious financial position. Many victims suffered substantially greater financial hardship after falling victim to this conspiracy than they were already facing when they entered into the bogus agreements with the conspirators. In many cases, the lenders ultimately foreclosed on the victims’ homes, after the victims had been induced to make their “trial mortgage payments” to the members of the conspiracy rather than to their lenders.
(snip)

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. If they were California residents, why did they end up in EDV?

Just because things go faster there?

Full disclosure: I live in Alexandria.

Thanks.