Bronx Woman Gets 15+ Years For Mortgage Fraud

A 52-year-old Bronx, NY woman was sentenced to over 15 years in prison after being found guilty of masterminding a multimillion dollar mortgage fraud scheme in Atlantic City, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced Wednesday afternoon, September 5, 2012.

Jong Shin was found guilty of all four charges in an indictment against her following a two-week trial last October, Fishman said. The charges included: conspiracy to commit wire fraud; conspiracy to commit money laundering; and two counts of making a false statement to a bank on a loan application, according to Fishman.

She was sentenced to 186 months in prison, as well as five years supervised release, Fishman said. She will have to pay $4.6 million in restitution.

The scheme involved the purchase and sale of seven residential properties 17 times in just over six months, according to Fishman. For each property, she prepared fradulent contracts to sell the properties to "straw purchasers," and included significantly inflated incomes as high as $29,000 a month on loan applications.

According to Fishman, she recruited and made large cash payoffs to real estate appraiser Michael Oxley to inflate the appraisals, and paid of a title clerk out of Northfield. The clerk was Anna Shea of Equity Title Agency, no longer located in Northfield, according to Fishman.

Summit Mortgage Bankers broker Esther Zhu helped Shin falsify numbers on applications and appraisals to help them be accepted by lending institutions, Fishman said.

Following 17 separate transactions, the "straw purchasers" owned the properties. The mortgage on the properties was far in excess of market value, and out of the range of affordability for the straw purchasers, Fishman said.

Shin collected $1.2 million in proceeds, which she laundered into her bank accounts through several monetary transactions.