Posted on 10/04/2008 5:00:20 AM PDT by Liz
.....a brazen family of fraudsters took advantage of sloppy subprime mortgage lenders to pull off a mindblowing scheme reeling in more than $200M - a devastating hit that contributed to the nation's financial crisis. Garri Zhigun was part of a Russian fraud ring using false documents, stolen ID's and "straw" buyers for over 1,000 subprime mortgages 2004-06. The 27-member gang worked out of a Brooklyn mortgage brokerage owned by Zhigun's mother........targets included fallen lenders Washington Mutual Bank, conned out of $842,500, Countrywide taken for $396,000.......and preyed on other banks and mortgage companies. Zhigun and accomplice Aleksander "Shorty" Lipkin bought condos for $8M and transferred ownership to Zhigun's mother, Galina Zhigun, owner of AGA Capital mortgage brokerage, and his wife, Maryann "Marina" Furman, office manager. Garri Zhigun lost his stockbroker's license in 2002 over fraud allegations. Mother Galina Zhigun, a civil engineer from Russia, pleaded guilty to bank fraud......she got $870,000 in mortgages from Flagstar Bank. Wife Furman pleaded guilty to wire fraud for faxing a phony loan application. She got $750,000 from New Century Mortgage Corp. records show.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I found out that builders, real estate agents, appraisors, underwriters, sub-contractors and others all made money on the transaction. Since they all were made whole at closing then it didn’t matter to them that deal stunk. This happened.
Amazingly my last name is of Scottish descent and the woman who came to closing as my wife was frigging INDIAN..as was the other co-signer.
THE SCAM is simple...buy a new home for $350,000, falsify the lending documents, falsify suppose home improvement/upgrades taking the house to $500,000, get a scummy appraisor who said it was done and values the house at $500,00, at closing the scumbag no ethic builder gets $350,000, the phony upgrade contractor gets $150,000, the real estate agent gets a commission, the appraisor gets paid, closing cost are paid to the phony mortgage broker (who happened to own the phony contracting firm who did the upgrades) and VOILA!!!!
Now our BULLSHIT government is making whole the financial entities and the GSE’s that underwrote and fertilized this rotten system.
ALL TRUE!!!
the Gambinos used to 'control' this sort of thing but since the break up/down the Russians have filled in many voids .... the chi-coms are in cartage in North Jersey
LOL that's just un-American
.
Old Rush brought up the illegal house cleaner that bought the 400 thousand plus home in Maryland the other day. No one has put the mortgage broke in jail yet?? Just wait until we get a republican attorney general!
I live in Atlanta. Where do you think the whole Houston deal started?
Atlanta, Houston, Detroit are all epi-centers of this crap.
My wifes pay check was stolen by a courier (along with others). The identities were then mined to determine who has the best credit to be used in a fraudulent purchase. That is where the bad guys use the credit resellers to do their dirty work for them.
REAL ESTATE WHIZ BUSTED FOR THEFT
By LAURA ITALIANO and ZACHERY KOUWE, NY POST
EXCERPT Adam Hochfelder, a 37-year-old hotshot real-estate developer, was arrested on charges of cheating banks, relatives and friends out of more than $17M over six years. As chairman of Max Capital Management, once one of the largest commercial landlords in Manhattan, he allegedly forged numerous documents and lied about his net worth in order to secure $10M in loans from Bank of America and North Fork Bank. Among other charges, he was indicted on six counts of grand larceny, punishable by up to 25 years in prison.
Hochfelder, the son of an Old Westbury, LI garment manufacturer; he gained notoriety in 1998 when he bought 230 Park Avenue - once owned by real estate legend Harry Helmsley.
Over the course of the DA’s four-year investigation, Hochfelder has paid back a little over $12M to the two banks and his allegedly swindled friends and family members.
Prosecutors allege he took money to pay capital calls at Max Capital and for personal expenses. He was very successful at convincing people he was a successful entrepreneur, but was using borrowed money.
SOURCE http://www.nypost.com/seven/08282008/business/real_estate_whiz_busted_for_theft_126489.htm
August 7, 2007
UN GUY IN 100G IMMIG FRAUD: FEDS
(ruse let illegal aliens slip into US)
By KATI CORNELL and C.J. SULLIVAN, NY POST
A United Nations translator and his pal pocketed more than $100,000 helping illegal aliens slip into the country through a ruse that made it appear hey were attending U.N.-sponsored conferences, the feds charged yesterday. Vyacheslav Manokhin, a Russian translator for the United Nations, and pal Vladimir Derevianko, Bloomfield, N.J, used official letterhead in drafting the bogus documents - often signing the names of fictional U.N. officials - for would-be immigrants round the world, the feds allege.
Since April 2005, approximately 20 phony letters went out, according to a criminal complaint unsealed yesterday in Manhattan Fderal court. At least nine illegal immigrants from Uzbekistan snagged U.S. entry visas after paying $15,000 each to Manokhin and Derevianko. To back up the
aliens’ entry visa applications, Manokhin, 45, allegedly listed his phone extension at the U.N.’s headquarters in Manhattan as a contact number and fielded calls
posing as an assistant to the nonexistent U.N. officials.
In some cases, Manokhin, who lives in a two-bedroom condo in Greenwich, Conn., signed his own name to he letters of request inviting the aliens to attend U.N. conferences in Manhattan - listing his title as U.N. “project coordinator.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Farbiarz said the pair duped officials around the world with their “sophisticated and audacious scheme” - going so far as to doctor
fax lines on the documents to make it seem like they came from U.N. headquarters. “It is a network that is very good and very successful at what it does,” Farbiarz old Federal Magistrate Judge Kevin Fox at an initial court appearance. The prosecutor said the scam was so polished that foreign officials verifying the applications abroad “flat-out fell for it.”
Derevianko, 44, who works translating immigration documents for a law firm, used his expertise to prepare the phony letters on stationery he got from Manokhin, according to Salvatore D’Alessandro, acting special agent in charge for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Derevianko, of Bloomfield, N.J., at times also posed as the head of a non-governmental organization involved in U.N.-sponsored conferences in correspondence and by phone, the feds alleged. U.N. investigators grew suspicious as early as 2005 and questioned Manokhin, who denied preparing the letters, but said he’d agreed to let Derevianko use his phone number and “to vouch for the visa applicants as legitimate [U.N.] conference attendees,” court papers state.
Manokhin’s lawyer Alex Oh said the translator has been in the U.S. for 19 years, though his wife and two children are on an extended vacation in Russia. “He does not want to return to Russia. He will contest the allegations vigorously,” Oh said.
The feds nabbed a third defendant, Kamiljan Tursunov, 44, in Florida for allegedly paying $15,000 to get a bogus invitation to a June 2005 United Nations onference that he never planned to attend. Tursunov, a citizen of Uzbekistan who has lived illegally in the United States for two years, admitted to federal nvestigators that he shelled out cash to enter the U.S. under false pretenses, according to court papers.
Derevianko, a former Soviet Union native, was granted political asylum by the US Feb 2005 and has a pending application for permanent-resident status. Manokhin and Derevianko face mmigration-fraud conspiracy charges that could land them maximum prison sentences of 5 years and 10 years respectively.
My only question is how many others were involved in the same nefarious activity. This group certainly weren’t the only ones cashing in. I’m sure this was being done by both immigrants and native born. However illegal immigrants would seem to be especially prone to this behavior because of a lack of ties to America, a shown propensity for breaking the law, and a built in support network in the country from which they came.
ping
We need more pubbie lawyers protecting the country and the system real quick.
This is why we need one set of banking rules that apply to all no matter who you are.
when America stopped being for Americans first we all got screwed.
bump
Thanks for that.
IMO a large part of the blame goes directly to Ted Kennedy who had a lifelong career working to diversify America with the scum of every despicable lowlife on the planet.
btt
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/17/nyregion/17theft.html
BTW....All refugees can get outrageous benefits. But Russians seem to exploit them the most. We got a lot of Somali Bantu refugees recently. They’re Muslim of course. They lack the savvy to exploit these refugee freebies from Uncle Sam, let alone use a flush toilet
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.