« Indiana Law - Online Child Support Calculators | Main | Indiana Decisions - Interesting story on judge shopping »

Friday, April 30, 2004

Indiana Decisions - Two takes on same story, in the same story

"Attorney gets 5-month sentence, and a lot of support," is the headline to a mortgage scam story published this week in the Muncie Star-Press. "Take #1" is found at the beginning of the story:

INDIANAPOLIS - Moments after Federal Judge Sarah Evans Barker sentenced a former Delaware County court official to a 5-month prison term, she nearly cried and told the people standing in her courtroom how she never wanted to hear the case. But she did, and former master commissioner Bruce McLaren, a man Barker had apparently met before, was sentenced in connection with a mortgage scam in which he and two co-defendants were able to steal money over a 3-year period.

Along with the 5-month prison term, Barker also sentenced McLaren to five months of home detention and two years of supervised probation, and ordered him to pay $314,361 in restitution. But, McLaren will not start serving his sentence until mid July so he can attended his daughter's wedding on May 22.

"Take #2" appears later in the same story:
According to federal authorities, McLaren, real estate agent Cindy Hickey, 45, and appraiser Danny R. King, 37, conducted 25 fraudulent real estate transactions between 1998 and July 2001. Most of the homes involved were on Muncie's south side, investigators said.

McLaren bought homes at low cost to resell. Then he and Hickey provided mortgage lenders false information about buyers' assets in order to get the buyers to qualify for mortgages. King allegedly provided numerous appraisals that corroborated the grossly inflated sales prices to mortgage lenders.

Based on the bogus information, the buyers obtained loans that were sometimes twice as much as McLaren had paid for the houses, investigators said. McLaren and Hickey shared the profits from the transactions, authorities alleged, and paid King a fee for his appraisals. In most instances, the buyers defaulted on their mortgages, prompting loan companies to foreclose on the properties.

[Original link thanks to Kemplog.com.]

Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 30, 2004 12:06 PM
Posted to Indiana Decisions