A former Bakersfield real estate agent and her father face 15 felony counts each of money laundering, conspiracy and grand theft in connection with an alleged multi-million dollar mortgage fraud scheme, newly filed court charges show.
Guadalupe Ramirez, 31, and Augustine Ramirez, 60, each are wanted on $1 million arrest warrants. The father and daughter were not in custody as of Thursday morning. They face more than 19 years in prison each if convicted on all charges.
The younger Ramirez was a Realtor with Bakersfield’s Touchstone Real Estate before the company merged with Watson Realty. Calls to several managers at Touchstone/Watson Realty Wednesday were not returned.
Augustine Ramirez purchased five homes in the span of six weeks near the end of 2006, according to county documents. In applying for loans, Ramirez indicated each house was to be his principal residence, mortgage fraud prosecutor Gordon Isen alleges in court documents.
In exchange for buying the homes at an inflated price, Ramirez received a kickback from the seller, in one case totaling $100,000, Isen writes.
Bakersfield Police Financial Crimes Detective Frank Wooldridge said Ramirez took out $4.1 million in fraudulent loans, and with his daughter, received about $385,000 in kickbacks. The homes went into default a few months after they were purchased, indicating Augustine Ramirez never made a single payment, Wooldridge said.
It’s one of the first cases handled by the new mortgage fraud division of the District Attorney’s Office but, Isen said, it’s just the beginning.
“I wouldn’t want to give you the impression this is the only real estate fraud case that we’re looking into, or the only one of this magnitude that we are looking into,” Isen said, declining to provide specifics.
“The victim is all of us, all of us who own homes and have to pay our mortgages,” Det. Wooldridge said. “We have to deal with these types of matters because it results in homes that are going to be foreclosed upon.”
Crisp & Cole Connection
One of the homes purchased by Augustine Ramirez is part of the focus of a federal mortgage fraud investigation centered on Crisp & Cole Real Estate. Prosecutors allege in court filings Ramirez received a $100,000 kickback from Crisp & Cole agent Justin Eddleman.
Documents obtained by 17 News reveal this series of transactions for the home at 12610 Crown Crest Drive:
Carl and Rebecca Cole bought the home in September 2004 for $361,500.
The Coles then sold the home to Crisp & Cole Real Estate in December 2004 for $465,000. That’s a profit of about $103,500 for the Coles in about three months.
Crisp & Cole sold the home to Crisp & Cole agent Justin Eddleman on the same day for $668,000
That’s a $203,000 one-day profit for the Crisp and Cole documents show.
Eddleman then sold the home to Augustine Ramirez in December 2006 for $949,000. That’s a profit to Eddleman of $281,000.
More than a year later the house went into foreclosure and was resold. That’s a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the mortgage company.
Another Case
In another case highlighted by Det. Wooldridge in court filings, Augustine Ramirez bought a home in 2006 for more than $800,000 that initially had been purchased one year earlier by American Star Mortgage loan officer Kevin Hoover.
“I bought a lot of houses, I flipped a lot of houses,” Hoover said in a telephone interview Wednesday indicating he had the home constructed before selling it to Augustine. “It was a year-long process and I think I lost money on the deal. I remember writing a check at the close of escrow to the bank because there wasn’t enough money to cover everything.”
“I think it was $25,000 or $50,000,” he added, saying he had not been contacted by law enforcement investigators.
“The loan file shows a $50,000 payout to “Ramirez Landscaping,” Det. Wooldridge notes in a search warrant filed in court. “This is a business that up until this sale has not been identified in the course of my investigation.”
Hoover remains in the lending industry with Creative Realty Mortgage in downtown Bakersfield.
Appraiser Jenny Recondo, who valued one of the properties for Ramirez, was cited in September 2008 by the Office of Real Estate Appraisers, a state agency that regulates the profession. The Ramirez property was noted in the decision.
Recondo was ordered to complete 30 hours of continuing education and received a $1,500 fine. An email to Recondo and calls to several numbers listed for her online were not immediately returned.Â
The four other home appraisals were performed for Ramirez by Eli Donati, who was stripped of his license by the OREA in November 2009.
Donati “failed to comply with the Management Section of the Ethics Rule by appraising to a predetermined result requested by a client,” OREA director Bob Clark writes of one of the Ramirez homes in an accusation against Donati.
Calls to Donati’s listed business number were not immediately returned.
The charges are among the first and most serious from the District Attorney’s mortgage fraud unit, which was created in August. The unit is funded by a fee attached to property sales.
“I wish the district attorney had more money to spend on real estate fraud, I wish the police department had more money to spend on real estate fraud.” Isen said. “Inevitably people slip through the cracks.”
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