I meant to blog about this earlier in the week but something else took precedent. I read a news story the other day about a California woman who was arrested this week for providing false information to lenders about the employment status of loan applicants. According to CBS News 5 in San Jose, 32-year-old Melissa Duran-Casaus is in custody on $20,000 bail.

Prosecutors tell News 5 that Duran-Casaus worked for a local insurance broker and would give false information to lenders about the employment status of loan applicants who were claiming to work at the brokerage (none of the applicants ever worked at the brokerage, according to court documents obtained by the television station). According to Rachel Dollar over at MortgageFraudBlog.com, court documents also allege that Duran-Casaus was working in cooperation with a local REALTOR®. Apparently, the REALTOR® would coach Duran-Casaus on what to tell lenders when they called to verify employment and annual earnings data which they had received from the Realtor’s affiliated loan applicants.

Wow; I mean, WOW!! This young woman now sits in a jail cell because she falsified employment verification information. Let that be a wake-up call to EVERYONE! Even if you think you’re just ‘helping out a friend’ by providing false or trumped-up info about their employment status, you are breaking the law.

Appropriately, Duran-Casaus is now charged with conspiracy and grand theft, and she faces a possible sentence of more than seven years in prison if convicted of all charges. That’s a tall price to pay for answering a phone and saying “Yes, so-and-so works here and they earn X number of dollars per month” to a lender attempting to verify employment!