From yesterdays Miami Herald article...
I guess congratulations are in order for Ms. Rosen and her defense team. I have to admit, this case flew under my radar as I had no knowledge of it or the fed's "Operation Stolen Dreams". Regardless, let's take a look at the federal indictment...Plantation attorney acquitted in federal mortgage fraud case
A Plantation attorney was acquitted of 13 counts of bank fraud Thursday, after a federal jury found that she did not knowingly participate in a mortgage loan scam that cost three banks $7.9 million.Eve Rosen, 55, was implicated in a scheme in which Broward County developer Jeffrey Phillips recruited South Florida straw buyers to create fraudulent loan applications in order to buy vacant lots in North Florida. Between 2006 and 2008, Rosen was the closing agent on all of the transactions, which featured artificially inflated prices, fake income statements and falsified down payment information. In addition to the 13 counts of bank fraud, Rosen was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud.
The case was part of Operation Stolen Dreams, the federal government’s largest-ever mortgage fraud takedown effort. Others involved in the case, including Phillips, the straw buyers and those who recruited them to falsify their information, have pleaded guilty in the scheme.
Rosen’s lawyers said their client did not know about the scam that Phillips was perpetrating and was duped just like the banks were.
“She’s been a practicing attorney for 25 years, with no [problems] in the past,” said Russell Koonin, of the Ferraro Law Firm. “There was not one witness on the stand who could point to say that she knew” about the scheme.
In a federal courtroom in Miami, prosecutors argued that Rosen was “deliberately ignorant,” and that she played a part in preparing falsified closing documents.
A jury returned a not guilty verdict Thursday, ending the 10-month long case.
Eve Rosen Mortgage Fraud Indictment
The charges seem to be in line with all the other federal mortgage fraud indictments, wire fraud, bank fraud etc, the only major difference between this case and the others is that this one appears to have involved unimproved vacant lots rather than homes. I really don't know enough about this case to comment at this point, you have to wonder though, how strong could the governments case been against Ms. Rosen if her codefendants all plead guilty and they still couldn't get a conviction against her?
On another note, I'm told that the defense is about to rest in the Plantation Cops mortgage fraud case. According to several of our sources, earlier this week one of the jurors told the judge that she was convinced that the cops charged were innocent and nothing that she was going to hear going forward was going to convince her otherwise! Assuming the government didn't get this juror thrown out, isn't a not guilty verdict a foregone conclusion at this point?
Considering the expected outcome of the Plantation Cops mortgage fraud trail, I'm left to wonder, who's going to put the defendants lives back together? Who's going to erase the last years worth of economic hardship? Who's going to restore their reputations within the community? If indeed the jury acquits the men charged in this case, was this case really as solid as the government made it out to be? I guess we're going to have to wait till next week to find out.
