Bruce and Martha Miles thought they were putting down $53,000 with a North Carolina mortgage loan officer to buy a new house.
Instead, they lost their money, were forced to file and bankruptcy and don’t have a new home.
“It’s a not a good situation,” Ryan Dyson, the Raleigh, N.C., lawyer representing the couple, told MortgageDaily.com. “I’m just surprised how easy it is to (allegedly) steal money in the mortgage industry.”
A loan officer and her associate are facing charges that they duped the couple into putting up the money for a mortgage and then spending the money on themselves.
Inga Johnson, 31, the mortgage loan officer who dealt with the Miles, has been charged with four counts of obtaining property by false pretenses, a spokeswoman for the Lee County District Attorney’s office told MortgageDaily.com.
Doris Hooper, who has been described as Johnson’s “associate,” faces one count of the same charge. Neither of the women is in jail and both are due in court this month.
Lawyers for the women could not be reached to comment. What follows is Dyson’s version of the chain of events.
Johnson was working as a loan officer for Beacon Mortgage in Sanford, N.C. The Miles gave her $53,000, which they believed was going to be held in escrow for a $90,000 mortgage loan.
But when the couple showed up for the closing they were told by that closing attorney that he had no funds and could not close the loan.
The Miles began immediately questioning Johnson, who according to Dyson told the couple that she tried to contact the mortgage lender she had given the money to but received no response.
The Miles were convinced that someone had taken their money “and run with it,” Dyson said. They repeatedly asked Johnson to contact the police but she was reluctant.
“She kept hemming and hawing,” Dyson said. “We kept telling her the longer she waits the colder the trail gets.”
Finally the couple called on state regulators and local authorities, which determined that the down payment had allegedly been deposited into a bank account controlled by Johnson and that checks payable to Johnson and Hooper had been written on the account, Dyson said.
“We don’t think there ever was” a mortgage lender, Dyson said.
Investigators also discovered that Johnson and Hooper are roommates.
The Dyson’s have lost their down payment, still don’t have a new house and have had to file bankruptcy, Dyson said.
Beacon Mortgage is claiming no responsibility, saying it would never authorize any sort of theft and that the employees were acting on their own, Dyson said.
