5 charges in Hennepin County (MN) fraud case
Monday, December 10, 2007 at 5:13PM 
In the following press release Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced the filing of charges in a $4.9 million mortgage fraud case. The fraud amount is the largest in a series of similar cases filed in recent weeks.
Charged with theft and racketeering in a 25 count complaint are Universal Mortgage, Inc., Universal President Donald Walthall, and Universal loan officers and agents Marlon Pratt, Rahmeen Underwood, Andre Bellfield and Cleveland Fields. Two of the defendants were taken into custody over the weekend and have been released from custody, however there are outstanding warrants for the remaining three defendants.
The complaint identifies 24 homes involved in the scheme, most of which are located in North Minneapolis and have gone into foreclosure. The complaint identifies five straw buyers used by Universal to purchase from 2 to 9 homes each.
The complaint alleges Universal Mortgage and its agents falsified the loan applications for its “straw buyers” to qualify them for bank loans. False statements in the applications concerned employment histories, incomes, assets, debts and intentions to reside in the purchased homes.
Freeman thanked several agencies including the U-S Postal Inspectors, the Minnesota Department of Commerce, the Minnesota Financial Crimes Task Force and the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
Resources:
Press Release
The Editor - Ian Shuter - ACFE, DMS
The Editor - Ian Shuter - ACFE, DMS
Marlon Pratt will be sentenced following guilty verdicts on all charges against him in Hennepin County District Court. It took jurors less than a full day of deliberations to return at 4pm Wednesday with19 guilty verdicts including two counts of racketeering and 17 counts of theft by swindle. Pratt, who showed no emotion as the verdicts were read, was found guilty of operating a fraudulent mortgage scam centered primarily in North Minneapolis. Pratt was found guilty of submitting and obtainingbank loan applications with false information in order to ibtain mortgages for more than $3 million dollars worth of residential properties. Jurors must now determine if Pratt will spend a longer time than the recommended prison sentence.
The Editor - Ian Shuter - ACFE, DMS
The same Hennepin County District Court judge that Marlon Pratt tried to have removed from his case, sentenced him this morning to 120 months in prison for seventeen counts of theft by swindle and two counts of racketeering. The sentencing guidelines ranged from 74 to 103 months, but Judge Lange said because of the economic impact of Pratt’s crime on the northside of Minneapolis and because, as the judge put it, “your [Pratt] greed should be spelled with a capital G”, Pratt was sentenced to a longer prison term. Pratt was found guilty of being the mastermind and/or leader behind a mortgage scheme that devastated the northside of Minneapolis and left more than a dozen properties in foreclosure at a loss of $3.2 million dollars. The scam ran for the period of November 2004 to November 2007. In short, Judge Lange said Pratt’s thinking was, “if I can get away with it, I will.” Pratt, who has served seven days in jail since his arrest, was immediately taken into custody. As part of his sentence Pratt must also make restitution of $500k.
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