Tammy Jones, a/k/a Tammy Taylor, 55, of Upper Marlboro, Md., pleaded guilty to wire fraud in connection with a mortgage fraud scheme. As part of her plea agreement, Jones will be required to pay $111,377.12 in restitution.
As stated in her plea agreement, in or around June 2017, Jones sought and received a loan modification through the HUD Partial Claim Program for her Brandywine, Md., home. HUD made a partial claim payment to Servicer 1 (who serviced Jones’s FHA-insured mortgage) of $111,377.12 on behalf of Jones. In exchange, Jones granted HUD a security interest in the Brandywine, Md., property for $111,377.12, the amount of the partial claim payment made by HUD. Jones also entered into a loan modification agreement with the mortgage lender, in which Jones owed $352,151.01 in principal and agreed to make monthly payments of $2,564.96.
In 2018, Jones sought to sell the Brandywine, Md., property for $429,900. To close the sale of the property, employees of a settlement company sought proof that Jones’s lien from HUD and the FHA had been released.
In fact, the lien had not been released. Jones thereafter created false and fraudulent documents to make it appear as though the lien had been released to facilitate the sale of the Brandywine, Md., home as part of the scheme.
Specifically, Jones created a fraudulent email account, purporting to be an employee of a company contracted by HUD to service loans on HUD’s behalf. Jones, posing as an employee of the HUD contractor, told an employee of the settlement company that the lien on the Brandywine, Md., home had been released and Jones created and attached a bogus lien release document. Jones thereafter continued to contact the settlement company while posing as an employee of the HUD contractor. Jones also submitted a fraudulent Certificate of Satisfaction to the settlement company, which permitted the sale of the Brandywine, Md., property on or about October 19, 2018.
After the sale of the Brandywine, Md., property closed, the induvial who purchased the home from Jones was notified of the outstanding lien on the property in 2019. Investigation revealed that Jones had falsified documents and fraudulently posed as an employee of the HUD contractor to further her scheme to defraud HUD.
In total, Jones caused a net loss of $111,377.12 to HUD, which represents the partial claim that HUD paid on behalf of Jones in September 2017.
Jones faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison followed by up to three years of supervised release for wire fraud. U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang has scheduled sentencing for May 20, 2022, at 2:30 p.m.