If you Falsify Income on a Mortgage Loan Application You Can Go to Jail as a Homeowner. If you are a Bank or Lender, You Get a Bonus Check in Your Paycheck.

U.S. Attorney’s Office February 01, 2013

Western District of Oklahoma (405) 553-8700

OKLAHOMA CITY—Safiyyah Tahir Battles, formerly a real estate agent with T&T Realty in Oklahoma City, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for mortgage fraud and money laundering, announced Sanford C. Coats, United States Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma.

On June 21, 2012, a jury convicted Battles of using an interstate wire facility to defraud Saxon Mortgage and engaging in a monetary transaction with more than $10,000 from the proceeds of crime.

The evidence at trial showed that in April 2007, she used her sister’s mortgage brokerage company, Lending Leaders, to apply for a $500,000 loan from Saxon Mortgage of Fort Worth, Texas.

Saxon required her to provide 12 months of bank statements to support her income and assets.

The jury heard evidence that the bank statements had been altered by adding more than $100,000 to the ending balance on each statement, by deleting her husband’s name as an account holder, and by removing numerous overdraft fees.

At the closing on May 4, 2007, Battles signed a final loan application that stated falsely that she earned $344,677.92 per year and had $165,907.70 in her bank account.

According to a tax return that she filed in March 2009, Battles’s adjusted gross income for 2006 was $14,001; according to the records of First Security Bank, her actual account balance on May 4, 2007, was $852.50.

Based on the application information, a forged letter, and communications with the mortgage brokerage on the day of closing, Saxon Mortgage authorized $102,630.01 from the loan proceeds to be paid to a local builder.

Battles took the $102,630.01 check at closing, deposited into her own bank account, and used it for her own purposes.

The money laundering count relates to a $15,000 check that Battles wrote to her mother, Trina Tahir, two days after she deposited the $102,630.01 check.

United States District Judge Timothy D. DeGiusti sentenced Battles to 30 months in prison and ordered her to pay restitution of $326,902.34.

She will be required to serve two years on supervised release after her prison term, including 104 hours of community service.

The court also imposed a forfeiture judgment in the amount of $102,630.01.

The sentence was based on the counts of conviction, as well as fraud that Battles perpetrated in connection with five other residential mortgages.

This sentence is the result of an investigation conducted by the IRS-Criminal Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Scott E. Williams and Chris M. Stephens.

Read the FBI Press Release

Oh, yes, Guess who she has to Pay $326k Restitution Damages to? The Trustee – Deutsche Bank.

“Turning to another aspect of her sentence, Ms. Battles challenges the legality of the restitution order directing her to pay $326,902.34 to “Saxon Securitization Trust 2007-3.” More specifically, she argues that, for purposes of restitution, “the victim identified to the jury at trial was not the same victim identified after trial.”

—–Ms. Battles points to Deutsche Bank as the tardily disclosed victim.”

Read the 50 page Opinion here

False Income Added to Mortgage Application by Lender