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Mortgage fraud charges filed against former Bakersfield Realtor, her father
A former Bakersfield real estate agent and her father face 15 felony counts each of money laundering, conspiracy and grand theft in connection with an alleged multi-million dollar mortgage fraud scheme, newly filed court charges show.
Guadalupe Ramirez, 31, and Augustine Ramirez, 60, each are wanted on $1 million arrest warrants. The father and daughter were not in custody as of Thursday morning. They face more than 19 years in prison each if convicted on all charges.
The younger Ramirez was a Realtor with Bakersfield’s Touchstone Real Estate before the company merged with Watson Realty. Calls to several managers at Touchstone/Watson Realty Wednesday were not returned.
Augustine Ramirez purchased five homes in the span of six weeks near the end of 2006, according to county documents. In applying for loans, Ramirez indicated each house was to be his principal residence, mortgage fraud prosecutor Gordon Isen alleges in court documents.
In exchange for buying the homes at an inflated price, Ramirez received a kickback from the seller, in one case totaling $100,000, Isen writes.
Bakersfield Police Financial Crimes Detective Frank Wooldridge said Ramirez took out $4.1 million in fraudulent loans, and with his daughter, received about $385,000 in kickbacks. The homes went into default a few months after they were purchased, indicating Augustine Ramirez never made a single payment, Wooldridge said.
It’s one of the first cases handled by the new mortgage fraud division of the District Attorney’s Office but, Isen said, it’s just the beginning.
“I wouldn’t want to give you the impression this is the only real estate fraud case that we’re looking into, or the only one of this magnitude that we are looking into,” Isen said, declining to provide specifics.
“The victim is all of us, all of us who own homes and have to pay our mortgages,” Det. Wooldridge said. “We have to deal with these types of matters because it results in homes that are going to be foreclosed upon.”
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