Jersey City man faces more charges in $30 million mortgage fraud scheme

https://www.nj.com/hudson/2019/06/jersey-city-man-faces-more-charges-in-30-million-mortgage-fraud-scheme.html

Jersey City man faces more charges in $30 million mortgage fraud scheme

Updated Jun 26, 4:16 PM; Posted Jun 26, 1:39 PM

By Michaelangelo Conte | The Jersey Journal

A Jersey City man has been indicted on more federal charges accusing him of running a $30 million mortgage fraud scheme involving properties in Jersey City and elsewhere in New Jersey, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito announced Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Anthony Garvin, 49, of Jersey City, was charged in a superseding indictment with one count of bank fraud conspiracy and five counts of bank fraud. He was indicted on one count of bank fraud conspiracy and one count of bank fraud on Jan. 11, 2019, Carpenito said.

Garvin was initially indicted only on the the conspiracy charge on Nov. 17, 2017. He was arrested along with Christopher Goodson of Newark.

Garvin and co-conspirators allegedly used fraudulent documents to purchase properties in mortgage default and then used more fraudulent documents to secure multiple loans for the resale of individual properties to “straw buyers” and then pocketed the money that was provided by financial institutions, officials said.

From January 2011 through November 2017, Garvin and others engineered fraudulent short sale “flips” of various New Jersey properties and also fraudulently obtained numerous home equity lines of credit, or “HELOC” loans, using fraudulent documents and information, according to court documents.

The conspirators allegedly arranged simultaneous fraudulent transactions for individual properties. In the first transaction, which involved the sale by the current owner, the conspirators convinced the financial institution holding the mortgage to accept the sale of the property at a loss, usually to a buyer who was secretly a conspirator or an entity controlled by the conspiracy, according to court documents.

In the second transaction, the conspirators flipped the same target property from the first buyer to a second buyer, who typically obtained a mortgage from another financial institution using false loan applications, pay stubs, bank account statements and title reports provided by members of the conspiracy. The resale frequently closed for as high as double the price of the purchase, according to court documents.
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