Diane H. Frederick Atari, 42, is accused of taking advantage of more than 100 potential home-buyers by fraudulently fixing clients credit and inflating their income on financial records to place them into homes they could not afford, Loudoun County Sheriff's Office spokesman Kraig Troxell said.
Atari is accused of illegally obtaining more than $1 million in the scheme. The total loss on these fraudulently obtained mortgages is estimated at over $50 million, Troxell said.
At a press conference in July authorities announced that Atari had left the country. Local law enforcement contacted INTERPOL to assist in locating Atari. She was taken into custody Oct. 14 and is held in a Turkish prison awaiting extradition, Troxell said.
Atari owns and operates ACR Consulting Company and Atari Management Company, both located in Loudoun. Atari offered “rent-to-own” services for customers who were seeking home ownership. In most cases, the customers were unable to qualify for mortgages due to bad credit or low income, Troxell said.
Police give the following account of how they believe Atari operated the scam:
She signed agreements with the victims with the understanding ACR Consulting Company would attempt to fix the victim’s credit, Troxell said.
Initially clients were signed under the agreement at no upfront charges, with money being exchanged at the closing proceedings on the home. Eventually, the suspect began charging the clients an upfront fee to cover expenses, Troxell said.
Atari allegedly worked with her clients’ creditors to pay off debt, most of the time at less than face value. The debt was usually paid out of Atari's own funds. The money would be returned upon the closing of the customers house purchase, Troxell said.
Atari also allegedly created false credit for her clients by taking associates with excellent credit and advising credit card companies to add her client as an “authorized user” of the card. This would help increase the clients FICO score. This helped create a false score allowing the clients to qualify for a mortgage, Troxell said.
During this time, Atari is accused of repairing the client’s reportable income. As Atari moved her client toward purchasing a home, she apparently falsified her clients’ financial documents by inflating the client’s financial status to the point they could qualify for the mortgage. In some cases, Atari deposited her own funds into the client’s bank account to show high balances, and she created false employment documents, Troxell said.
Once the mortgage was approved, Atari would take her clients to close on the property. Sometimes the clients would balk at the large monthly payments required under the fraudulently secured mortgage. Atari would agree that she would subsidize their payments and help them make the monthly payments until she could refinance their loan at a much lower interest rate, thus reducing their monthly payment to a manageable figure for a period of time, Troxell said.
Atari would make her commission upon the sale of the property. She would also receive the fee for credit repair and any monies that she fronted for her client. She also allegedly took a percentage of the fees paid at closing for the brokerage of the services. Most of these homes were unaffordable for her clients and were destined for foreclosure, Troxell said.
Atari was indicted in Loudoun County Circuit Court on ten counts of using false statements to obtain credit, one count of money laundering and one count of racketeering.
The year-long investigation was a joint effort between the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office Financial Crimes Unit and the Virginia Office of the Attorney General's Financial Crimes Intelligence Center.
Source: Loudoun Times
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