Home sales fraud trial underway

Stroudsburg, PA.-"Will the title agent accused of altering home-sale records, removing key documents and lying about it be convicted by her own words? The trial of Anita Peterson, the abstractor who handled sales closings for Eagle Valley Homes, is underway with prosecutors playing two secretly taped phone conversations.Peterson's comments were recorded through the cooperation of Dana Kleintop, a former Eagle Valley mortgage broker who turned evidence in return for immunity from prosecution...She is charged with removing key documents from Eagle Valley Homes sales files subpeonaed by a state grand jury formed by the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office.This includes removing copies of checks — which prosecutors say show discrepencies between the stated amounts buyers put down for homes and the amount ultimately reported to the bank on the federal HUD disclosure form. Authorities say Eagle Valley Homes did this to inflate mortgages and create false down payments...Defense Attorney Marshall Anders challenged Kleintop’s credibility. Anders said Kleintop herself presented false pretenses in the phone conversations, misrepresented facts in her own testimony to the grand jury, and broke the law while employed at Eagle Valley...Kleintop admitted she altered sales agreements by inflating sales prices and hiding down payments, to falsely make it appear to the banks that buyers made the required 15 percent down payments."...
March 08, 2007