Virginia Loan Broker Turned Fugitive Sentenced 9 Years For $100M Bank Fraud Conspiracy
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — A Virginia loans broker who was a fugitive since 2011 and was recently extradited from South Korea to the U.S. was sentenced to nine years in federal prison Friday
Loren Young Park, 52, of Falls Church, was sentenced for conspiracy to commit bank fraud in connection with a scheme to fraudulently obtain business loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration with resulting losses of more than $100 million.
He was a fugitive for eight years and then extradited in 2019 from South Korea to face those charges.
According to his plea agreement and court documents, Park and his brother, Joon Park, owned and operated Jade Capital, which brokered small business loans for clients and on behalf of Loren Park, Joon Park and their family.
Both Parks and others under their direction encouraged prospective borrowers to apply for business loans through the SBA's Section 7(a) program which guaranteed 75 percent to 90 percent of qualified loans made by banks and other commercial lending institutions.
Loren Park admitted that from 2003 to 2011 he and others submitted SBA loan applications to loan originators and underwriters on behalf of their clients that contained fraudulent documents including bank statements from borrowers that were altered to make it look like the borrowers had more cash than they did, counterfeit cashiers' checks and fake gift letters to make it look like they had more assets at their disposals than they did.
They also fabricated resumes to make it look like borrowers had more experience running the businesses they sought to purchase than they did, as well as fake tax returns, phony interim financial statements and many other representations, the plea agreement said.
Loren and Joon Park charged a loan brokerage fee to both the financial institutions and the borrowers for assembling and submitting loan application packages that resulted in the issuance of SBA-guaranteed loans. The fees charged to borrowers were hidden from the financial institutions underwriting the loans.
The Parks also had undisclosed ownership interests in businesses involved in some of the transactions and received loan proceeds without the lenders knowing in a number of transactions.
Loren Park was on a business trip to South Korea when he learned he had been indicted, and chose not to return to avoid the charges.
His co-defendant Joon Park, 48, also of Falls Church, was sentenced to 188 months in prison, followed by four years of supervised release and was ordered to pay a money judgement of $91,449,700 and forfeit all the property involved in the offense.
Five other co-defendants were sentenced to between a year and a day in prison and 51 months in prison and were ordered to pay restitution of between $216,472.92 and $3,593,432. In addition, the co-defendants were ordered to pay money judgments of between $11,832,000 and $18,764,900.