Simon Saeid Koli and Kian Ashkanizade have pled guilty in connection with a mortgage fraud scheme involving four expensive homes on Triton Street, Carlsbad, California.
As previously reported on Mortgage Fraud Blog and the indictment, both defendants, who worked at a mortgage company called Southern California Finance, admitted that they recruited family members and friends to supply their names and signatures on mortgage loan applications as the purported buyers for these million-dollar homes. The defendants further agreed that they then fabricated the job titles, income, and assets of the purported buyers, so they could qualify for approximately $1 million in mortgage funding on each of the properties. The defendants also acknowledged that they diverted $200,000 in sham “consulting fees” and another $45,000 in fraudulent “construction fees” from each of the four transactions.
The defendants took for themselves most of this extra $980,000 that they diverted from the escrow proceedings. The defendants also admitted disguising these so-called “fees” by first funneling the payments through bank accounts owned by friends and relatives, and then causing the funds to be withdrawn or transferred for their own benefit.
Defendants Koli and Ashkanizadeh are scheduled to appear before United States District Judge Irma E. Gonzalez for sentencing on October 26, 2012, at 1:30 p.m.
United States Attorney Laura E. Duffy made the announcement.
