New revelations of the mortgage brokers in the Plantation Cops mortgage fraud case committing even more fraud! Also, can anyone guess which grossly over paid City of Miami employee gets a take home car?

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Just when you think you've heard it all regarding the mortgage brokers what are at the center of the Plantation Cops mortgage fraud case, something else pops up that leaves you speechless.  From the very beginning of the case we've been told time and time again that the mortgage brokers involved were a literal fake document factory, they faked and forged all kinds of documents from verification of employment letters, bogus loan applications, fake tenant leases, etc.  Much to the governments chagrin, the various defense attorneys have exposed these guys to be the crooks they are, not only by having them admit to all the fake documents that they created but also having them admit that they also forged the borrowers signatures on most of the same documents which we later found out was common practice for thousands of loans that they originated over the last decade.  

If all that wasn't bad enough, yesterday we learned that the mortgage brokers, Rene Rodriguez Jr and Matt Gulla, had also been submitting fake loan commitments to the lenders!  For those of you that are unsure about what a Loan Commitment Letter is, lets be clear: 

...it's the document an underwriter sends to the loan officer once a loan is approved.  A commitment letter will detail every aspect of the mortgage. It will include the terms and interest rate. It will itemize the “Conditions” (the items that must be provided or explained for final approval). The commitment letter will be dated and it will have an expiration date. It may be signed by the underwriter. The Loan Commitment Letter is a formal, legally binding document.

In one instance, UBS sent the mortgage brokers a commitment letter that said the loan was going to be 80% loan to value meaning the buyer had to bring in a 20%  down payment with no secondary financing.  Pretty cut and dry right?  The lender (UBS) was granting the loan based on the fact that the buyer was putting in some of  his own money, since the buyer was going to have his own money in the deal he was less likely to default on the loan therefore making the loan a safer bet for the bank since the buyer was going to have some "skin in the game".  In this instance the lender prohibited secondary financing, but that wasn't an issue for the brokers!  Fraudsters Rodriguez and Gulla altered this loan commitment and removed the secondary financing prohibition then forwarded it to another lender who provided the remaining money to close the deal therefore making this loan a nearly 100% bank financed deal even though the original lender prohibited secondary financing.  Not bad, huh?  You think there's any chance that the poor guy who borrowed the money for this home knew anything about the degree of fraud and criminality that was involved in this deal?  Is it conceivable that the mortgage brokers told the borrower that they were not only going to fake the loan applications and other associated documents necessary to obtain the loan, but that they were going to also fake the official loan documents that the primary lender issued in order to obtain financing from a secondary lender?  Highly unlikely.  


What makes all this even worse is that Rodriguez and Gulla, the mortgage brokers that are at the center of this shitstorm that we refer to as the Plantation Cops mortgage fraud trial aren't even on trial!  These guys set themselves up with sweetheart deals from the get go, even before anyone was indicted.  It seems to me that these guys should be the ones that get the book thrown at them, not the poor cops who got the loans then paid them off only to later get indicted and have their careers and lives destroyed based on the testimony of two lowlife criminals who would sell their mothers out in order to lessen their stints in federal prison.  Oh well.


Now, moving on, once again our friend Al Crespo comes through with a fantastic bit of reporting where he uncovers a list of all of the City of Miami employees that have a take home car from the city, can anyone guess who we found on that list?  Take a look...

That's none other than the federally indicted City of Miami Assistant Fire Chief Veldora Arthur!  Not only has Veldora been sitting at home since she was Federally indicted for mortgage fraud on paid administrative leave while pulling down over $300k+ in pay and benefits and traveling all over the country over the past few months since her indictment, to add insult to injury she's also got a car that's paid for by the City of Miami taxpayers!  Sweet, where can I sign up for a deal like this?  Like everyone's been saying lately, ONLY IN MIAMI!