PHOENIX, AZ – A mortgage broker pleaded guilty to six counts of bank fraud on Monday and could face up to 180 years in prison or a $6 million fine; possibly both.
Jeffrey Todd Crandall, 33, of Mesa, is on trial after he defrauded banks of thousands of dollars in a complicated mortgage fraud scheme that he began in 2005.
According to authorities, Crandall bought several pieces of real estate in the Queen Creek area and placed them in the name of his brother-in-law.
Crandall then inflated the prices of the properties by hundreds of thousands of dollars and persuaded friends to buy them.
Once he created a sale, Crandall acted as the mortgage broker for the property sales and prepared the buyers’ loan applications. Crandall fabricated as much information as possible, inflating the buyer’s income numbers for example, to persuade the banks to give the buyer a loan.
Crandall also apparently told the banks that the buyers would be supplying a down payment, when in fact Crandall himself was paying the down and giving cash back to the buyers.
All of the properties Crandall sold eventually went into foreclosure.
Crandall pleaded guilty to six counts of bank fraud and if convicted, could end up serving up to 30 years in prison or paying $1 million fines for each count.
