Woman Charged In $1 Million Keys Mortgage Fraud
FLORIDA KEYS (CBSMiami) — A Florida woman who allegedly set up numerous fake businesses to create mortgages in the Keys leading to almost $1 million in bank fraud was charged Wednesday.
CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald reports Rose Marie Sandrie, 61, is charged with one count of organized scheme to fraud.
Sandrie gained nearly $1.4 million from the scheme, according to investigators.
She was picked up by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office on Aug. 22 based on a warrant obtained by the Monroe County state attorney's office, and brought to the Keys jail on Tuesday. She is being held in lieu of a $1 million bond on a single count of scheme to defraud.
Investigators say that from 1998 through 2008, she owned Loansource Mortgage Inc. and Sunshine Title Inc., both Keys businesses registered with the state.
At least nine times from February 2002 to February 2007, investigator Chris Weber wrote in a report, Sandrie "made false representations to National City Mortgage/PNC Bank in order to obtain mortgages" for five Key West properties and one in Marathon.
Once she obtained them, she would deposit the money into escrow accounts, then withdraw much of it and deposit those withdrawals into her personal accounts, investigators allege. Not every transaction, however, involved the theft of money.
She even used a dead woman, former Sunshine Title director Kendra Foster of Summerland Key, who died on Nov. 9, 2002, in the scheme, Weber wrote.
"Prior to her death," Weber wrote, "Foster was sole agent and signatory for Sunshine Title Insurance Inc. Based on that agreement, all title commitment letters issued by Sunshine Title Insurance Inc. were valid on the face."
However, after she died, "all title commitments" with her signature became invalid. Therefore, Weber wrote, "all mortgages that relied on a title commitment from Sunshine Title were fraudulent and invalid."
Yet mortgages or second mortgages in the years going forward through Sunshine Title were issued for properties on Fogerty Avenue, Truman Avenue, Virginia Street, Riviera Drive and Whitehead Street in Key West; and on Seventh Avenue bayside in Marathon.
Overall, the loss to National City Mortgage/PNC Bank was $825,361.67, Weber and bank investigators concluded.
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