An Oxford, Mass., man pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six to eight years in state prison in connection with a scheme to defraud homeowners and mortgage lenders by providing fraudulent documents in legal and real estate transactions in the Boston area, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced.
Allen Seymour, 53, pleaded guilty to the charges of forgery (11 counts), uttering (5 counts), larceny over $250 (5 counts), larceny over $1200 (1 count), and money laundering (4 counts). Following the plea, Judge Mark Hallal declared Seymour a common-and-notorious thief and ordered him to serve six to eight years in state prison followed by three years of probation with the conditions he surrender $190,000 and 238 gold coins, as well as a condition he is barred from handling real estate transactions. The AG’s Office said it intends to use the cash and the value of the gold coins for victim restitution, pending an agreement with the court.
Throughout 2017 and 2018, Seymour repeatedly targeted vulnerable homeowners, including elderly residents, in Cambridge and Brookline to fraudulently gain control of their residential properties and then resell them at a profit to buyers without the knowledge of the homeowners. Seymour forged purchase and sale agreements, power of attorney documents and other records in the name of the homeowners to orchestrate fraudulent residential sale transactions and gain control over the seller’s proceeds. Seymour then laundered those funds through third party accounts and purchases of gold.
He also collected deposits totaling $550,000 from the homebuyers relying on his forged purchase and sale agreements for properties in Brighton, Somerville and Cambridge. In total, Seymour stole over $1.5 million through these various transactions.
In 2010, Seymour previously pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years to two and a half years in state prison for a similar mortgage fraud scheme prosecuted by the AG’s Office. Seymour will begin his new sentence this week after completing the three to five years in state prison he was sentenced to for violating probation from this 2010 conviction. Seymour was arrested in South Carolina in 2018 for the probation violation.
Seymour’s son, Corey Seymour, and his former wife, Tina Seymour, also were charged in connection with this scheme. Corey Seymour pleaded guilty to money laundering and conspiracy charges in July 2019 and was sentenced to two years of probation with the condition he be barred from working in the real estate industry for knowingly helping his father turn stolen funds into cash by depositing cashier’s checks through the accounts of third parties. Tina Seymour was sentenced to two years of probation with the condition she is barred from working in real estate for assisting Allen Seymour with the forgeries and providing unauthorized access to notary stamps.
This case is being prosecuted by Assistant Attorney General Edward Beagan of Healey’s White Collar & Public Integrity Division with assistance from Victim Witness Advocate Lia Panetta of the Attorney General’s Victim Witness Services Division, Financial Investigator Patrick Cooney of the AG’s Financial Investigations Division and the Massachusetts State Police assigned to the AG’s White Collar and Public Integrity Division. The Massachusetts State Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Brookline Police, the Cambridge Police, and the Horry County Sheriff’s Department of South Carolina assisted with the investigation.