Kimberly Mackey, Reverse Mortgage Scheme, Florida 2011

Pittsburgh Woman and Florida Man Sentenced for Reverse Mortgage Scheme

Kimberly Mackey, a 47-year-old loan officer from Pittsburgh, was sentenced to 60 months in prison, five years of supervised release, and ordered to pay more than $1.6 million in restitution. Mackey’s co-conspirators, Marcos Echevarria and Louis Gendason, were also sentenced for their roles in the scheme.

According to court documents, Mackey, Echevarria, and Gendason engaged in a reverse mortgage scheme between May 2009 and November 2010 that defrauded unwitting borrowers, Genworth Financial Home Equity Access Inc., and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The scheme involved fraudulently inflating the value of borrowers’ properties through altered real estate appraisals, causing Genworth to approve and the FHA to insure more than $2.5 million in reverse mortgage loans.

Mackey, a licensed title agent, fraudulently closed the Genworth loans and failed to pay off the borrowers’ existing mortgage loans. The defendants divided the loan proceeds and used the money for their personal benefit. To conceal the existence of the Genworth reverse mortgage transactions from the original mortgage lenders, the defendants engaged in a loan modification scheme involving short sales and fictitious offers to buy some of the borrowers’ properties.

The sentences were announced by Assistant Attorney General Tony West and U.S. Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer in the Southern District of Florida. The case was investigated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Inspector General (HUD-OIG), the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the FBI’s Miami Field Office.

Defendant Information:

Name: Kimberly Mackey
Criminal Charges: Reverse Mortgage Scheme
City and State: Pittsburgh, PA
Date: December 16, 2011 (sentencing date)
Sentence: 60 months in prison, five years of supervised release, and ordered to pay more than $1.6 million in restitution

Other defendants: Marcos Echevarria (29, Palm Beach, FL) – 24 months in prison, five years of supervised release, and ordered to pay more than $1.6 million in restitution, and Louis Gendason (42, Delray Beach, FL) and John Incandela (24, Palm Beach, FL) – scheduled to be sentenced on December 16, 2011.

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