Mortgage Broker

The owner of Invictus Financial Group in Havertown was sentenced to 60 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution of $3.9 million for operating a real estate investment scheme that caused $6 million in losses to lenders, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia said. Kirk H. Kirby, of Capital Heights, Md., pretended to be a licensed mortgage broker and ran what the government said was similar to a Ponzi scheme in 2006 and 2007. An accomplice, Sholanda Y. Johnson, of Philadelphia, was sentenced to 30 months and ordered to pay back $2.4 million.

The U.S. attorney in Philadelphia charged Michael J. Smith, of Springfield, Delaware County, with participation in mortgage fraud that caused losses of $665,000 to lenders. Smith, a former mortgage broker, allegedly participated in a conspiracy with John C. Lucidi Jr. and Eric Maratea, both of whom are charged elsewhere, in a scheme to buy properties, mostly at the Jersey Shore, at inflated prices so that buyers could receive kickbacks of tens of thousands of dollars. Smith was one of the buyers, according to the four-count indictment.

I may lose the home I am trying to buy. The mortgage broker who is handling my mortgage assured me I would have no trouble qualifying for a mortgage. But it took the appraiser more than two weeks to appraise the house, and then she came in with an appraisal $10,000 below the price I am paying for the house. The mortgage broker is as mad as I am at the lender who selected this incompetent appraiser. The mortgage broker has contacted the lender with details on recent neighborhood sales of comparable homes that justify the price I am paying for the house.

PNC Mortgage and Coldwell Banker Corp. will have their Home Mortgage Network joint venture up and running this month, according to the chairman of PNC Mortgage, a unit of Philadelphia's PNC Bank Corp. Home Mortgage Network will allow home buyers to shop for mortgages while they shop for a home in any of Coldwell Banker's 340 company-owned offices nationwide. Buyers will not be limited to doing business with PNC, but will have a variety of lenders to choose from, Walter C. Klein, chairman and chief executive of PNC Mortgage, said.

I think you are unfair to mortgage brokers. Sure, there are probably some rotten apples out there, but we recently refinanced our home mortgage through a very efficient mortgage broker who not only saved us money, but got our loan closed at a low interest rate. Shortly after New Year's we went to our current lender, a local S&L, to refinance our 11 percent mortgage. The loan fee was to be 2.5 points. Within a week, we supplied all our loan application paperwork. By the end of January, our loan still had not been approved.

A Las Vegas man who once worked in West Chester was charged today by the U.S. Attorney here in a $7-million mortgage fraud scheme. Authorities said John C. Lucidi Jr., 30, who formerly worked as a mortgage broker for companies in West Chester and Newtown Square, defrauded at least seven financial institutions as part of a scheme that lasted from May 2005 to October 2008. The court filing alleged that Lucidi found buyers, including family members, to purchase homes-primarily located in North Wildwood for inflated prices so that buyers could get kickbacks of of between $30,000 and $50,000 at closing.

As mortgage rates decline, the question most readers are asking me these days is this: How low can they go? What the experts are telling me is that the rates could fall below 4 percent without more government intervention. The Fed's decision to create the lowest possible rate target for federal funds - money the central bank provides to lenders - was an effort to encourage looser credit. It doesn't really seem to have worked. Banks continue to be tightfisted, and the economy is at a standstill.

A Berks County judge ordered six former employees of a jailed mortgage broker to pay restitution of nearly $1.5 million to victims, mostly in Lancaster and Berks Counties, of a $28 million fraud from 2003 through September 2007. But the state Attorney General's Office, which filed the 2008 consumer-protection lawsuit against Wesley A. Snyder and his Berks County companies that resulted in this month's judgment, responded Friday with a posttrial motion asking Common Pleas Court Judge Albert A. Stallone to enter far larger judgments against the employees.

Mortgage broker Ferdinand L. "Frenchy" Risco suggested to a federal judge yesterday that a three-year prison term for swindling 16 poor Philadelphians out of $52,275 would be sufficient punishment for him. U.S. District Judge Louis Pollak agreed. In imposing the sentence, Pollak rejected the prosecution's recommendation for a longer term. The judge also declined to fine Risco, saying that would hinder him from making restitution to his victims. Risco told the judge he'd made "some mistakes," but wasn't "as dangerous or bad" as the prosecutor made him out to be. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tina Williams Gabbrielli said Risco has two prior fraud convictions, had been dodging his taxes for several years, and is "a consummate con artist" who has "lived a life of trickery and deceit.

The state Attorney General's Office has charged seven South Jersey residents with collecting unemployment benefits while they had jobs. They were among 14 people statewide who were indicted on charges of stealing a combined $253,331 from the state's unemployment insurance trust fund between 2001 and 2005. Those indicted on third-degree charges of theft by deception: Michelle Washington of Sicklerville, who the state alleges collected about $15,000 while she was working as the manager of a nursing home in West Windsor, N.J. Washington, 43, is now the manager of the Branch Village section of Camden's housing authority.