Former Owner and Operator of Phony Mortgage Rescue Company Sentenced to Prison for Role in Fraud Scheme

NEWARK—A Scotch Plains, New Jersey man was sentenced today to 33 months in prison for his role in a mortgage fraud scheme he organized through Elite Financial Solutions, a purported home foreclosure rescue company he owned and operated, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.

Stephen French, 53, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge William J. Martini to one count of wire fraud conspiracy, admitting he caused more than $1 million in losses through the scheme. Judge Martini imposed the sentence today in Newark federal court.

According to documents filed in this and related cases and statements made in court:

Beginning in February 2005, French devised a scheme to use Elite to fraudulently induce financial institutions to provide mortgage loans to unqualified borrowers, enabling French and his co-conspirators to earn consulting fees from the sales of properties financed by the loans.

Michael Martino, 47, of Bloomfield, New Jersey, who as an employee of Elite was responsible for recruiting straw buyers for properties in foreclosure, was sentenced on March 15, 2011 by Judge Martini to one year and one day in prison. Martino previously pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy before Judge Martini.

French, Martino, and others at Elite targeted New Jersey homeowners who could not make mortgage payments and were facing foreclosure. They would promise the homeowners that Elite would help them keep their homes and repair their damaged credit. The homeowners would be instructed to permit title to their homes to be put in the names of straw buyers for one or two years. French promised to improve their credit ratings during that time, help them obtain more favorable mortgages, and ultimately return title to their homes.

French, Martino, and others at Elite told the homeowners that equity withdrawn from their homes would be kept in escrow and used to pay the mortgages and expenses and to repair their credit. Instead, Elite took a “consulting fee” of $25,000 per property, and the remaining equity was deposited into bank accounts French controlled. French, Martino, and others at Elite paid the straw buyers $10,000 for use of their names and credit histories in the transactions, and submitted fraudulent loan applications to mortgage lenders in the straw buyers’ names in order to ensure the loans would be approved.

In addition to the prison term, Judge Martini sentenced French to five years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution of $1,957,525.

U.S. Attorney Fishman credited special agents of the FBI, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Michael B. Ward in Newark, with the investigation leading to today’s sentence.

The government is represented by Jacob T. Elberg, Deputy Chief of the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Health Care and Government Fraud Unit in Newark.

This case was brought in coordination with President Barack Obama’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. President Obama established the interagency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force to wage an aggressive, coordinated, and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes. The task force includes representatives from a broad range of federal agencies, regulatory authorities, inspectors general, and state and local law enforcement who, working together, bring to bear a powerful array of criminal and civil enforcement resources. The task force is working to improve efforts across the federal executive branch, and with state and local partners, to investigate and prosecute significant financial crimes, ensure just and effective punishment for those who perpetrate financial crimes, combat discrimination in the lending and financial markets, and recover proceeds for victims of financial crimes.

Defense counsel: K. Anthony Thomas Esq., Assistant Federal Public Defender, Newark