SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

RICO's reach

Applying law to mortgage fraud commendable

2:00 a.m. April 10, 2009

There's a first time for everything, and the first use of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, to prosecute mortgage fraud is happening here under U.S. Attorney Karen Hewitt.
According to the indictment returned by a federal grand jury, the charges against two dozen defendants stem from a scheme masterminded by Darnell Bell that worked this way: He and some cronies organized phony real estate companies and a network of straw buyers to purchase properties for more than the asking price. With a network of real estate professionals, they arranged inflated appraisals to support the inflated sales prices, to prepare and submit fraudulent documents and to close the deals.

So that the leaders of the scheme wouldn't lose a dime in those deals, they got mortgages with nothing down.

Between 2005 and 2008, the indictment alleges, Bell and others cheated unsuspecting sellers out of 220 homes, whose sales prices totaled $100 million, and lenders out of $11 million. Bell allegedly netted $9 million. The houses went into foreclosure.

Here we have 24 people indicted for “using a corrupt enterprise to conduct a pattern of racketeering activity; namely, wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.â€