State Attorney Indicts Five after Investigation Discovered $1M Mortgage Fraud Ring

The State Attorney General's Office has indicted two attorneys, an appraiser and two others for their roles in a mortgage fraud ring that operated for years and netted more than $1 million by preying upon first-time home buyers and institutional lenders.

The five defendants’ bilked consumers by advertising a rent-to-own opportunity in which first-time home buyers were offered a chance to own their own homes without down payments and no closing costs.

The defendants then took out fraudulent loans against those properties and pocketed the money. A 19-count indictment was unsealed Tuesday in Onondaga County Court charging attorney Theresa Sanders, 55, formally of Westerville, OH, and mortgage processor Tracie Clark, 41, of Fla., with several felonies, including: residential mortgage fraud, five counts of grand larceny in the second degree, and three counts grand larceny in the third degree.

The other defendants were arraigned last week and sent to jail on $250,000 bail.