A Family and Their Friend are Charged with Foreclosure Related Fraud in Texas

January 13th, 2009 | Tags: Foreclosure Notice

Four residents of Texas comprising of a family of three and their friend have been charged with foreclosure related fraud. Three have been indicted and arrested in Henderson and Kaufman counties. The accused are residents of the city of Gun Barrel – Kandace and Darrell Marriott and their daughter Kelly as well as Karen Hayes.

The first three have been indicted in February 2008 in connection with the nefarious activities of their firm One Way Home & Land. This case is still running. They are now being charged for business dealings of Energy Homes.

The office of the Accountant General alleges that the defendants submitted false applications of loans to see that lenders accepted the same from borrowers who were not qualified for it. The participants also sought safeguards from HUD. When the borrowers defaulted HUD was left with the bill. For this taxpayers suffered to the tune of $3 million.

The FBI, HUD (office of the Inspector General) and district attorney’s different offices in the counties of Kaufman, Henderson, Navarro and Ellis worked together in this fraud case.

One of the attorneys for the defendants Kandace and Darrel Marriott, Bill Glaspy said that his clients would contest the accusations. He said that the indictment was tantamount to “overzealous persecution”. He argued that the defendants were in no way connected with the process of loan application and hence cannot be accused of fraud. The information is filled in by the borrower on the loan application form and dispatched to the loan-processing department. The latter verifies if the facts are correct or not.

After this HUD comes in, said Glaspy, wherein a fresh application is required from the title company that requires the signature of the loan processor stating that the information has been checked. Hence the Marriots could not be implicated in this procedure. He said, “It’s kind of a hard reach to (say) Glaspy’s clients are doing something wrong. Maybe the loan processor did something wring, maybe the people filling out the loan did something wrong, the Marriott’s were out of the loop.”

There are always tortuous legal arguments for and against an allegation. The fact that the accused do not have a clean past record speaks volumes. Also of relevance is the truth that right across the nation similar types of fraud have been staged taking advantage of the housing boom and the vulnerability of the borrowers.