Jury hung in Anita Peterson home fraud trial

Stroudsburg, PA.-"A deeply divided jury Thursday acquitted home-sales title agent Anita Peterson on two charges regarding the way she handled home closings, but deadlocked on six other counts. She is expected to face a new trial in May...Following a six-day trial, Peterson, who facilitated home sales transactions as former owner of Mountain Valley Abstract, was found innocent of one count of perjury and one count of falsely testifying before a Harrisburg grand jury...Deputy Attorney General James Reeder, the prosecutor, said he intends to retry Peterson on those six counts...Peterson handled home closings for Eagle Valley Homes, a former Brodheadsville builder whose two owners each pleaded guilty last year to a single home-sale fraud charge and were sentenced to probation...The state also produced secretly taped phone calls between Peterson and a cooperating witness in which Peterson appears to tell the witness she weeded through and removed notes from her subpoenaed files. But Peterson never said she removed 'checks' from those closing documents. The jury apparently believed Peterson, since the two charges they acquitted her on dealt directly with producing the checks...Prosecutors say Peterson intentionally falsified dollar amounts on federal Housing and Urban Development disclosure forms to hide the fact that buyers didn't have enough money at closing to qualify for mortgages under terms set by the primary lender. They also say Peterson hid the existence of second mortgages, used as down payments on the primary mortgage.They charge that Peterson also hid some aspects of multiple transactions, sometimes involving the sale of land from one Eagle Valley subsidiary to another, before the land was immediately sold again to the buyer as part of a home-construction package."...
March 16, 2007