Word: riveras
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Among those arrested in the state were Evelyn Rivera and William Louisma, twentysomethings who live in the same sprawling development in the upper-class city of Wellington, part of Palm Beach County. The two, along with at least one other person, allegedly concocted a plan in February to buy 55 townhomes in Fort Lauderdale, inflate their values and establish "straw borrowers" whose incomes were pumped up to qualify for the big loans. The gang reportedly hoped to make as much as $8 million in profits after they got the loans and then abandoned the homes to foreclosure...
...precipitous drop in values is apparently what spurred Rivera, Louisma and their associates to come up with their alleged scam. Here's how it seems to have worked...
...Rivera, the owner of a title company, allegedly created a shell firm whose name (Rookery Park Estates PH) mirrored the real corporation that owned the townhomes, then acted as owner and seller of the townhomes when filing the loan applications - all without ever buying a unit. Louisma allegedly used his chiropractor business to falsify borrower names and incomes (making it seem they were his employees). The duo's accused associate, Michael Acosta, a Boca Raton property appraiser, allegedly filed paperwork listing the value of each townhome at $400,000, as Rivera put together a plan to buy them...
...plan unraveled within two months. Only two units were "sold," prosecutors say, and a bank wire transfer of $690,000 to an account held by Rivera led to the arrests. The bogus sale price of the homes may have been the giveaway. "Generally, where there's been the fastest price appreciation is where we've seen the greatest incidents of mortgage fraud," says John Mechem, spokesman for the Mortgage Bankers Association...
...forces and police - remarks that seem to all but assure that the small South American nation will not renew the lease for the U.S. antinarcotics surveillance base at Manta on Ecuador's Pacific coast. For Correa, "the political costs" of letting the base stay "outweigh the benefits," says Freddy Rivera, a security expert at the Latin American Social Sciences Faculty University in Quito...