Bank Fraud

A band of three Baltimore residents bought more than $500,000 worth of imported cars and other luxury goods by using personal information culled from stolen mortgage application files, according to a federal court indictment handed up yesterday. A federal grand jury charged Nekia Ishawn Hunter, 28, Lavon Caldwell, 25, and Faye Marie Jones, 51, with conspiring to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft. Separately, another co-conspirator mentioned in the indictment -- Christopher Carson, 39 of Baltimore -- was charged individually through a criminal complaint with identity theft.

The man whose theft from a local marketing company sparked an ill-fated lawsuit against one of the nation's largest employee placement companies pleaded guilty to bank fraud in federal court yesterday. According to the plea agreement in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Raheim Jackson, 34, of Silver Spring obtained temporary employment at several companies from which he took money to pay for his personal expenses. Beginning in March 2003, Jackson worked for the Rosen Group in Baltimore, providing bookkeeping services.

A computer analyst who hatched a scheme to steal $16.8 million from his company and then flee to Europe under a new identity was sentenced yesterday to more than three years in federal prison.Scott Michael Posnanski, 31, of Lake-in-the-Hills, Ill., was described at the sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore as an intelligent man from a good family who succumbed to greed. He was caught by U.S. Postal Service inspectors, Secret Service agents and the FBI as he attempted to wire the money overseas.

A prominent Prince George's County land developer and his lawyer were accused yesterday of running a multimillion-dollar "shell game" that defrauded two banks during slick maneuverings in high-powered real estate deals.Daniel I. Colton of the former real estate company Colton and Laskin Inc. and attorney Ellis J. Koch are charged with conspiracy and bank fraud for shielding assets from banks looking to collect on defaulted loans, federal prosecutors said."They concealed, like a pea under a shell, $2.1 million," Assistant U.S. Attorney Dale P. Kelberman told jurors in opening statements yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

A former Baltimore County trucking company executive who made large donations to political candidates pleaded guilty yesterday to contempt of court charges involving his fraudulent credit card and bank check use.Brian H. Davis, 52, who is serving a sentence for bank fraud and tax violation in the Federal Correctional Institution at Cumberland, appeared yesterday before U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis. Sentencing for the new charges is set for Oct. 28.Assistant U.S. Attorney Dale P. Kelberman said that Davis engaged in credit card fraud and bank fraud from June to August 1997 -- a period when he'd been convicted and was about to be sent to prison.

A prominent Prince George's County land developer was convicted of bank fraud yesterday for a scheme in which he and a partner shielded assets from banks seeking to collect on defaulted loans.Daniel I. Colton, 48, of the former real estate company Colton and Laskin Inc. was convicted in U.S. District Court in Baltimore on three counts of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. The jury deliberated for about 10 hours.A co-defendant, Montgomery County attorney Ellis J. Koch, 56, was acquitted.

An Illinois computer analyst was indicted yesterday on charges he planned to steal $16.8 million from his employer, move it through a Baltimore bank and vanish with the money, using a new identity, federal prosecutors said.Authorities halted the alleged scheme in its final stages as the analyst and an accomplice were about to wire millions to a bank account in the tiny eastern European nation of Estonia, according to the indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.Scott Michael Posnanski, 30, of Lake-in-the-Hills, Ill., and Jonathan Andrew May, 33, of Portland, Ore., had attempted to wire the money from a NationsBank branch in Baltimore, prosecutors said.

An attorney representing the creditors of a man convicted of bank fraud sued former state Sen. John A. Pica yesterday, claiming that almost $60,000 in payments to the former Baltimore legislator were improperly made.Zvi Guttman, the bankruptcy trustee for Brian H. Davis, alleged in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court that Davis made "fraudulent and preferential transfers" of money to Pica at a time when the former trucking executive was on the brink of insolvency.The suit asks that Pica and his wife, Laura, repay an estimated $60,000 so that it can be distributed among Davis' creditors.

FBI agents arrested a Baltimore man Friday and charged him with using a personal computer and other equipment to create counterfeit checks in a sophisticated scheme to bilk banks in three states out of more than $220,000.Richard Tirrell Terry, 23, of the 5100 block of Harford Road was arrested about 11 a.m., said Special Agent Kevin L. Perkins. Terry appeared before Magistrate Judge Paul M. Rosenberg and was released pending his arraignment March 14.Terry, who also used the name "Perrie Thedan," has been charged with seven counts of bank fraud.

A Nigerian national serving seven years in federal prison for attempting to run over a Secret Service agent was convicted yesterday of stealing more than $200,000 in an intricate bank fraud scheme.Akinola Obayanju, 36, pleaded guilty to money laundering and bank fraud in the scheme, in which he forged checks from legitimate businesses so that he could make large withdrawals for himself. Obayanju is suspected of funneling much of the money to Nigeria, prosecutors said.Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew C. White said Obayanju made high-quality copies of checks drawn on accounts belonging to an Atlanta law firm and a Greenwich, Conn.

A federal jury in Baltimore convicted Nancy Jean Siegel yesterday of murdering a Reisterstown man 30 years her senior after conning him out of everything he owned as part of a decades-long scheme that had dozens of victims, including her daughters and husbands. The verdict was returned after about seven hours of deliberations in U.S. District Court. The jury found Siegel guilty on 20 of 21 counts, including mail, wire and bank fraud; identity theft; and witness tampering by killing 75-year-old Jasper Frederick "Jack" Watkins in 1996 to keep her financial crimes from being discovered.

Pa. man, 34, pleads guilty in Web sex sting A 34-year-old Pennsylvania man who used the Internet handle "searay1974" pleaded guilty yesterday to interstate travel with the intent to have sex with a Baltimore County minor. Patrick G. Mahan, who lives in Lincoln University, could face a maximum of 30 years in federal prison. Sentencing is scheduled for April, according to the Maryland U.S. attorney's office. Mahan contacted a Baltimore County police detective, who was posing as an underage girl online, according to a statement of facts.

A former Westminster bank teller pleaded guilty yesterday to embezzling between $400,000 and $1 million from her bank over nine years and using the money to buy a Hummer, a Corvette and snowmobiles, according to the Maryland U.S. attorney's office. Karen L. Baer, 46, admitted committing bank fraud and faces a maximum prison sentence of 30 years and a $1 million fine, federal prosecutors said. She is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 3 in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. Prosecutors said Baer worked as a teller from 1998 to Oct. 25 last year, when she was fired.

A 38-year-old Baltimore man was sentenced yesterday to six years in prison for bank fraud and aggravated identify theft for his role in fraudulently opening credit accounts, according to the U.S. attorney's office. Christopher Carson had pleaded guilty to opening accounts in the names of at least 15 victims, federal prosecutors said. Carson worked with Nekia Hunter, who purchased credit reports stolen from a mortgage company and then manufactured fraudulent Maryland driver's licenses for Carson and others.

A band of three Baltimore residents bought more than $500,000 worth of imported cars and other luxury goods by using personal information culled from stolen mortgage application files, according to a federal court indictment handed up yesterday. A federal grand jury charged Nekia Ishawn Hunter, 28, Lavon Caldwell, 25, and Faye Marie Jones, 51, with conspiring to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft. Separately, another co-conspirator mentioned in the indictment -- Christopher Carson, 39 of Baltimore -- was charged individually through a criminal complaint with identity theft.

The man whose theft from a local marketing company sparked an ill-fated lawsuit against one of the nation's largest employee placement companies pleaded guilty to bank fraud in federal court yesterday. According to the plea agreement in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Raheim Jackson, 34, of Silver Spring obtained temporary employment at several companies from which he took money to pay for his personal expenses. Beginning in March 2003, Jackson worked for the Rosen Group in Baltimore, providing bookkeeping services.

A 22-year-old man fatally shot in South Baltimore early yesterday was found by a patrol officer who was close enough to see muzzle flashes and hear gunshots, police said. An officer on routine patrol was driving a marked cruiser on Patapsco Avenue near South Hanover Street about 1 a.m. when he saw what he thought might be someone discharging a gun, police spokesman Officer Troy Harris said. The officer heard additional shots and drove to the location, about three blocks away in the 3800 block of S. Hanover St., where he found a man lying in the street suffering from gunshot wounds to the head and torso.

HOUSTON -- Kenneth L. Lay was repeatedly told that it was illegal to use some loans to buy stock, a banker testified yesterday in the government's bank-fraud case against the former Enron Corp. chairman. James Shelton, a Bank of America Corp. executive who oversaw the bank's loans to Lay starting in 1993, told U.S. District Judge Simeon T. Lake III that he explained to Lay many times that he was forbidden under federal law from using some of the credit lines to buy stock. Shelton said he also got Lay to sign forms explaining the limitation.

Bank fraud defendant gets 2 years in prison An Owings Mills man was sentenced to more than two years in federal prison yesterday for his role in stealing more than $400,000 in a bank fraud scheme, according to the U.S. attorney's office. In addition to the 27 months in prison, U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz sentenced Ronald Stewart, 31, to five years of supervised release and ordered him to pay restitution of $457,181, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said Stewart and his wife stole from CitiFinancial Inc. from September 2003 until October 2005 while he was working at a Baltimore branch office.

Despite a tear-filled apology and an emotional plea for mercy, Daniel Baldwin Jr., a senior securities broker who once orchestrated stock trades for pension fund manager Nathan Chapman, was sentenced in federal court yesterday to serve 18 months in prison. Baldwin, 49, of Randallstown, pleaded guilty in October to one count of securities fraud for buying hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of shares for a startup company run by his boss at eChapman.com Inc. A federal jury convicted Chapman in 2004 of bank fraud; he is appealing the conviction.