InfoBytes Blog
New York Thrift Charged with Mortgage Fraud by Manhattan District Attorney
On May 31, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (DA) announced charges against Abacus Federal Savings Bank (Bank) and nineteen of its former employees for their alleged involvement in a securities and mortgage fraud scheme from 2005 to 2010 that resulted in the sale of “hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fraudulent loans” to Fannie Mae. The DA charged the Bank with allegedly falsifying mortgage application documents, primarily for immigrants working in cash-only businesses, by inflating their income, assets, and job titles, as well as falsifying employment verifications and other income sources to meet investor guidelines to enable the Bank to sell loans to Fannie Mae. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and Office of the Inspector General provided assistance and cooperation with the investigation as part of their participation in the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group.