This site has learnt that on October 22, 2009 Mark Kiel, the owner of First National Mortgage Solutions, LLC (in MISSOURI) and employee Codi McArdle entered guilty pleas in relation to their roles in a wider straw borrower mortgage fraud. Click here for articles of incorporation.

The Plea Agreement states that they acted with the Sheryl Elms [who has not yet been indicted] a closing title agent for Integrity Title and Legacy Land Title, in a flipping scheme which featured straw borrowers and inflated purchase prices, [Editor Comment and presumably inflated appraisals]. Elms is alleged to have prepared two HUD-1’s for each transcation one with the true purchase price for the uninvolved seller and one with the inflated price for the lender.

The difference between the two prices, which they referred to as “the spread” was cut in a check which was given to Kiel or McArdle at closing. These payments were not reported accurately on the HUD-1 to the lender.

The FBI was able to identify 37 different transactions involving 10 lenders with the total “spread” taken from them at $438,048.16.

Three properties are mentioned in the Plea Agreement:

5322 North Palmer, Kansas City, MO
936 Hillside Avenue, Liberty, MO
10805 North Cosby, Kansas City, MO

The original Information can be found here.

Our enquiries have revealed that this matter is related to two other recent cases announced by the US Attorney in Kansas City:

1. Joseph & Julie Silverstro who were sentenced in August 2009 for their part in a scheme which also involved Sheryl Elms preparing false HUD-1’s. Click here for the full journal entry

2. Katherine Sartain and 6 others were indicted in December 2009 for their part in a flipping scheme. Click here for the full journal entry.

Editor Note: I have personal knowledge of this case and any lender who would like more detail can email me by using the “Contact the Editor” link in the left hand menu (I don’t want my email address “collected by a web crawler or I would publish it here.