Kevin Patrick Sluga, 60, and his wife, Leslie Sluga, 57, Bakersfield, California, have been sentenced for their roles in the Crisp & Cole mortgage fraud scheme wherein the defendants and other individuals defrauded lenders by causing materially false and fraudulent statements to be submitted in mortgage loan applications and related documents to obtain loans from lenders for property purchases.
According to media reports, Kevin Sluga was sentenced to 20 months in prison and Leslie Sluga received a term of three years probation.
As previously reported by Mortgage Fraud Blog, the defendants had pled guilty in January 2010, to four counts of wire fraud and two counts of wire fraud, respectively. As part of their respective plea agreements, Kevin Sluga and Leslie Sluga have agreed to cooperate in the government’s ongoing investigation.
Kevin Sluga is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) who provided corporate tax and accounting services to Crisp & Cole Real Estate and Tower Lending, a Bakersfield, California, mortgage company affiliated with Crisp & Cole and owned by Crisp & Cole’s owners. Kevin Sluga prepared tax returns for a Crisp & Cole owner as well as for various Crisp & Cole employees.
Kevin Sluga and Leslie Sluga admitted in their plea agreements, that they, along with certain individuals at Crisp & Cole and Tower Lending, and other individuals, executed schemes to defraud mortgage lending institutions by causing materially false and fraudulent statements to be submitted in mortgage loan applications and related documents to obtain loans from lenders for property purchases.
I am involved in helping prevent fraud and scams in real estate. I find this article interesting as most of the articles I read of this nature are about how the real estate professional defrauds the consumers and customers. This is one of few where the real estate professionals are defrauding one another. The fraud, scams and schemes in the industry has to stop. I would love to read others opinions, insights and thoughts on this matter.
Charles Knighton II, MSRE
President- The REI Consumer
Charles@REIConsumer.org
http://www.REIConsumer.org
He must have thrown his daughters and son-in-law pretty far under the bus. BTW, Kevin is now an inmate at Correctional Facility Taft, CA. Getting a short sentence so close to home must have been part of the deal.
Perfect… those typical “CPA” letters for “self” employed borrowers… and they weren’t the only CPA’s guilty of this either.