New York man gets 12 years in prison for mortgage fraud
A New York man was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison for bilking more than 300 people out of $1.2 million in fraudulent home loan application fees.
“This defendant preyed on prospective home owners across the country that were pursuing the American dream of owning their own home,” said U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates in Atlanta.
The man, Kenneth J. Enrico, recruited two brokers in Atlanta and others around the country to help him take loan applications, for which they collected fees for loans that Enrico could not close.
Yates and court documents said from 2009 until about October 2012, Enrico offered residential mortgage loas that would finance as much as 105% of a home purchase at interest rates as low as 4.99 percent. He required prospective borrowers to pay him an up-front fee of $2,500 or more per loan, which he said was to cover the costs of processing and approving the loan application. Enrico encouraged brokers to participate by directing them to tack on application fees for themselves and promising them profits from the promised loan closings.
Enrico lacked any source of funding for the loan program and appears to have done little or no work to obtain any such funding. He operated out his apartment, equipped with a telephone and a fax machine. FBI agents searched his apartment in October 2012 and found boxes of loan applications stacked on the floor of a closet and $198,000 in cash in Enrico’s apartment.
Enrico, 47, of Bohemia, N.Y., Enrico was found guilty of 17 counts of conspiracy, mail fraud and wire fraud.
About the Author
Christopher Quinn is a writer and editor who has worked for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 1999. He writes stories on Veterans Affairs, business including high-tech growth in metro Atlanta, Georgia's $72 billion farm economy, and he oversees assigning and editing news obituaries.
