Six Sellers Indicted in Slavic Village Mortgage Fraud Case

Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Topics: Economy, Other
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Cuyahoga County's Mortgage Fraud Task Force has quietly indicted six more people in the ongoing investigation into a massive mortgage fraud scheme in Cleveland's hard hit Slavic Village neighborhood. As part of our ongoing series, Facing the Mortgage Crisis, ideastream®'s Mhari Saito reports.

Last October, Cuyahoga County prosecutor Bill Mason, local politicians, neighbors and law enforcement packed a rickety front porch of a foreclosed house in Slavic Village. There they announced a 73-count indictment against three people: a mortgage broker, his girlfriend and a business associate charging them in the county’s biggest mortgage fraud case to date.

Then, six months later, and without any media fanfare, Mason’s office updated the filing, charging six sellers with aiding the $5.8 million dollar scheme involving 78 houses, many of them now vacant, boarded up or demolished.  Mason’s office wouldn’t comment except to say it was a pending investigation.  Attorney Dennis Levin represents four of the six new defendants, Pak Chang Lui, Pak Tim Lui, Pak Hor Lui, and Pak Yang Lui, Chinese American relatives living in Independence.

Dennis Levin: The government has said that somehow their actions hurt the neighborhood and I think that if anybody looks at this and hears the evidence you’re going to find that not only did their actions not hurt, it increased the value of the property there and they did nothing knowingly that was illegal.

The indictment claims that sellers created a sham second mortgage scheme that duped lenders into thinking home buyers had a down payment. A court date is set for early October. 

More In This Series...

This feature is part of the series Mortgage Meltdown.