A contract mortgage loan underwriter faked her own death to avoid charges of mortgage fraud.
But federal prosecutors in Virginia eventually caught on to Kym Salisha Saloman’s scheme and she now faces up to 22 years in prison and $250,000 in fines after pleading guilty to wire fraud and identity theft charges, according to a statement from U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg of Richmond, Va.
Saloman, 43, was a contract underwriter for GE Mortgage Contract Services. In early 2005 she began working as a loan underwriter for Ivanhoe Financial, a mortgage lender.
In March of 2005 Saloman launched her fraud scheme, the prosecutor said.
“Saloman orchestrated a fake mortgage loan transaction on her own residence in the west end of Richmond,” Rosenberg said in the statement.
Armed with two sets of aliases, Social Security numbers and dates of birth, Saloman acted “as both the buyer and the seller on the transaction,” Rosenberg said.
“Saloman unlawfully used Social Security numbers on both ends of the transaction that belonged to other people,” he said.
Believing she was the legitimate seller of the property, Ivanhoe Financial wired $299,640 to Saloman as proceeds of the bogus sale.
But eventually Ivanhoe uncovered the scam. That’s when Saloman arranged to let her bosses and co-workers believe she had died, Rosenberg said.
“Once the transaction was detected by Ivanhoe Financial, Saloman attempted to fake her own death in an effort to escape liability,” he said. “Employees at Ivanhoe received a call falsely indicating that Saloman had been involved in a serious car accident.
“In a subsequent call, the employees were falsely informed that Saloman had died from her injuries,” Rosenberg said.
The FBI investigated the case. Saloman faces the aggravated identity theft charge — which comes with a mandatory two year sentence — for illegally using Social Security numbers in her scheme, Rosenberg said.
