Jason Trador, FHA Fraud Scheme, West Virginia 2024

A Putnam County man was sentenced to prison for his role in a multi-million dollar FHA fraud scheme in West Virginia.

Jason Trador, 46, of Scott Depot, was sentenced to one year and six months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $65,302.16 in restitution for making a false statement to federal agents, willfully overvaluing property on a loan application, and three counts of making a false statement to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The conviction stems from a scheme in which Trador allegedly fraudulently obtained a $223,870 home mortgage insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) from his then-employer, Victorian Finance LLC, a mortgage lending business.

Trador was delinquent on paying his federal taxes for a prior tax year at the time he applied for the FHA loan in August 2018, and was not eligible for an FHA loan under existing FHA program rules. Trador deceived Victorian Finance into approving the application and the FHA into insuring the mortgage by providing a series of falsified documents, including a falsified Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax transcript purporting to show a payoff of the delinquent $8,151 tax debt.

‘Jason Trador was a loan officer with a duty to keep fraud out of the mortgage lending industry when he betrayed that position of trust and tricked his then-employer with his sophisticated criminal scheme,’ said United States Attorney Will Thompson.

Thompson commended the investigative work of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Inspector General (HUD-OIG) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in securing the conviction and sentence.

The case is a reminder that significant penalties await those willing to commit fraud involving HUD-funded programs.

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