8 indicted in 'massive mortgage fraud scheme'

Baltimore Sun

June 12, 2008

Eight people have been indicted by a federal grand jury in connection with what federal prosecutors in Maryland describe as a 'massive mortgage fraud scheme' by a Prince George's County company that promised to help homeowners facing foreclosure keep their homes, the state U.S. attorney's office announced today.

The indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt says that representatives of Lanham-based Metropolitan Money Store Corp. tricked people into signing over the titles of their homes to the company, ran up equity loans and pocketed the money they had told homeowners would be put into escrow to pay their bills.

The suspects were indicted in what federal prosecutors described as a 'foreclosure reversal scheme.'

Joy Jackson, 40, and her husband, Kurt Fordam, 38, of Ft. Washington; Jennifer McCall, 46, her husband, Clifford McCall, 47, McCall's daughter, Chandra Jones, 30, and Wilbur Ballesteros 32, all of Lanham; Kurt Fordham's sister Katisha Fordham, 35, of Washington; and Ronald Chapman, 33, of Washington, are all charged with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and 15 counts of mail fraud. Jackson and Kurt Fordham are also charged with six counts of money laundering, and Jennifer and Clifford McCall and Jones are each charged with one count of money laundering.

'Homeowners who fall behind on their mortgage payments should be wary of con artists who claim that there is an easy way to avoid foreclosure,' Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement. 'Just as get-rich-quick schemes are usually fraudulent, get-out-of-debt-quick schemes are usually phony, too.'

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