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 27, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FORMER LEE’S SUMMIT MAN PLEADS GUILTY TO

$2.7 MILLION MORTGAGE FRAUD SCHEME

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Matt J. Whitworth, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a former Lee’s Summit, Mo., man pleaded guilty in federal court today to his role in a nearly $2.7 million mortgage fraud scheme.

Matthew Tucker, 31, a California resident who is formerly of Lee’s Summit, waived his right to a grand jury and pleaded guilty before U.S. Chief District Judge Fernando J. Gaitan this morning to a federal information that charges him with wire fraud.

By pleading guilty today, Tucker admitted that he and others caused a number of mortgage lenders to provide financing for 45 loans involving 36 different properties, resulting in $2,695,883 in loss.

Tucker was employed as a mortgage broker at various entities during the time frame of the offense. While Tucker was working at Empire Lending, an individual who was interested in purchasing duplexes as investment properties backed out of the deal. Tucker, believing that the duplexes would be a good investment, decided that he would prepare the loan paperwork to purchase the properties for himself.

Tucker, knowing that the loans would not be approved with his current financial situation, created phony W-2s, pay stubs, rental lease agreements, and bank statements to support the inflated income and asset numbers on the phony loan applications. Utilizing this scheme, Tucker purchased a number of rental properties.

Tucker formed a company called KAE Management, which was created to manage the rental properties for Tucker and other individuals whom he assisted in obtaining rental properties utilizing the same scheme. Tucker created false and fraudulent loan applications for several of his extended family members, including his in-laws. In order to qualify them for loans, Tucker falsely inflated their salary on the loan applications. In several of the loan applications, Tucker falsely indicated that the borrower worked for KAE Management making a substantial salary. Additionally, at the time of closing, the HUD-1 forms often included a substantial payment of the loan proceeds from the lender to KAE Construction, which was intended to be used as money to make the mortgage payments on the properties until renters could be secured.

Under federal statutes, Tucker is subject to a sentence of up to five years in federal prison without parole, plus a fine up to $250,000. 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 David M. Ketchmark. It was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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