NEWS RELEASE

OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY

WESTERN DISTRICT OF MISSOURI

MATT J. WHITWORTH

Contact Don Ledford, Public Affairs ● (816) 426-4220 ● 400 East Ninth Street, Room 5510 ● Kansas City, MO 64106

www.usdoj.gov/usao/mow/index.html

JULY 21, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

OZARK MORTGAGE BROKER PLEADS GUILTY TO

$500,000 MORTGAGE FRAUD SCHEME

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – Matt J. Whitworth, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a former mortgage broker pleaded guilty in federal court today to her role in a $500,000 mortgage fraud scheme.

Cheryl Joan Kassebaum, 43, of Ozark, Mo., pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. England to the charges contained in a Nov. 20, 2008, federal indictment.

Kassebaum, a former mortgage broker and co-owner of Metro Consulting Group, admitted that she participated in a scheme to defraud home mortgage lenders from March to July 2006. Kassebaum participated in a conspiracy to obtain mortgage loans for the purchase of a home based on false loan applications, and to return a significant portion of the loan proceeds to the purchasers of the homes without the lender’s knowledge and outside the closing of the home purchase.

This scheme involved seven houses with home mortgage loans ranging from approximately $200,000 to more than $400,000. The amount of loan proceeds returned to the borrowers ranged from less than $30,000 to nearly $100,000. Some of the home purchasers subsequently defaulted on the loans, and the homes have been foreclosed or are in the process of being foreclosed. The readily provable economic loss attributable to Kassebaum’s criminal conduct is $497,200.

Kassebaum’s role in the conspiracy was to prepare and submit fraudulent loan applications to lenders. Kassebaum knew those loan applications included overstatements of income and understatements or omissions of liabilities, and falsely represented that the purchaser/borrower intended to reside in the home to be purchased. Kassebaum also facilitated the return of a significant portion of the loan proceeds to herself and other purchasers/borrowers without the lender’s knowledge and outside the closing of the home purchase by routing the returned proceeds through Master Marketing Consultants and then through Metro Consulting Group.

Kassebaum also pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, related to the transfer of loan proceeds from the scheme, and one count of money laundering, related to monetary transactions involving criminally-derived property.

Under federal statutes, Kassebaum is subject to a sentence of up to 45 years in federal prison without parole, plus a fine up to $1.5 million and an order of restitution. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled after the completion of a presentence investigation by the United States Probation Office.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas C. Bunch. It was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and IRS-Criminal Investigation.

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