FEDERAL GRAND JURY CHARGES WOMAN WITH BANK FRAUD AND MORTGAGE FRAUD
BIRMINGHAM – A federal grand jury today indicted a Bessemer woman for bank fraud and aiding others to make false statements on a mortgage loan application by creating letters to support fraudulent disability claims, announced U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance.
TAMIKO JACQUES DAVIS, 42, is charged in a two-count indictment filed in U.S. District Court.
According to the indictment, the bank fraud and the aiding and abetting false statements to a financial institution were carried out as follows: Between October 2007 and December 2009, DAVIS worked as a clerk of Cooper Green Mercy Hospital and created fraudulent letters which substantiated other people’s claims that they suffered from a physical disability. The letters were used to support fraudulent claims by loan applicants that they were receiving monthly disability payments from the Social Security Administration. The letters directly assisted the loan applicants in obtaining mortgage loans that they would otherwise have been unable to obtain from financial institutions.
The maximum sentence for each count is 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
The FBI and the inspector general’s offices for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Social Security Administration investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Carney is prosecuting it.
This prosecution is part of President Barack Obama’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. President Obama established the interagency task force to wage an aggressive, coordinated and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes. The task force includes representatives from a broad range of federal agencies, regulatory authorities, inspectors general, and state and local law enforcement who, working together, bring to bear a powerful array of criminal and civil enforcement resources. The task force is working to improve efforts across the federal executive branch, and with state and local partners, to investigate and prosecute significant financial crimes, ensure just and effective punishment for those who perpetrate financial crimes, combat discrimination in the lending and financial markets, and recover proceeds for victims of financial crimes.
Members of the public are reminded that the indictment contains only charges. A defendant is presumed innocent of the charges and it will be the government’s burden to prove a defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt at trial.