Anthony T. Williams, Mortgage Debt Reduction Scheme, Hawaii 2020

HONOLULU, Hawaii - A 49-year-old man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in a fraudulent mortgage debt reduction scheme that targeted distressed homeowners in Hawaii, mostly non-native English speakers in the Filipino immigrant community.

Anthony T. Williams, of Pineville, Louisiana, was sentenced on March 3, 2020 by U.S. District Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi to 240 months' imprisonment for wire fraud and mail fraud.

The scheme involved Williams marketing a fraudulent mortgage debt reduction scheme to homeowners, promising to eliminate their existing mortgage obligations or reduce them by half. However, Williams created two companies, Mortgage Enterprise Investments (MEI) and Common Law Office of America (CLOA), neither of which was licensed to service or modify mortgages.

Williams falsely promised victims that he could eliminate their existing home mortgage obligations by filing bogus documents with the Hawaii Bureau of Conveyances. He then advised homeowners to stop making their mortgage payments to their lenders and to pay him instead.

Between 2012 and 2015, Williams enlisted 112 victims in Hawaii into his MEI program and fraudulently obtained over $230,000 from his victims, without providing any legitimate services. Several victims testified at trial that they had relied upon Williams's representations and went into foreclosure or bankruptcy. Two victims testified that they lost their homes as a result of Williams's scheme.

Williams was also ordered to pay restitution and serve three years of supervised release. The sentence is to run consecutively to a 15-year sentence of imprisonment that another court had handed down earlier to Williams for similar fraudulent conduct in the State of Florida.

The investigation was led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kenneth M. Sorenson and Gregg Paris Yates handled the prosecution.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-hi/pr/fraudster-sentenced-20-years-imprisonment-connection-fraudulent-mortgage-debt-reduction