News Releases
JENNIFER GRANT PLEADS GUILTY TO MILLION DOLLAR MORTGAGE FRAUD CONSPIRACY
August 25, 2005
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
David E. Nahmias, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, and Gregory Jones, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, announce that JENNIFER C. GRANT, 47, formerly of Jamaica, Atlanta, Georgia, and London, England, pleaded guilty today to one count of a federal indictment charging a conspiracy to violate the bank fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, interstate and foreign travel fraud, bankruptcy fraud and money laundering statutes by defrauding real estate owners, real estate investors, and mortgage lenders. According to Nahmias and evidence presented in court at today’s plea hearing:
GRANT was immediately detained without bond after the hearing. The evidence showed GRANT collected approximately $1 million from real estate investors for the purported purchase and investment in residential and commercial properties in Atlanta, Georgia, Aliceville, Alabama, New Jersey and elsewhere by falsely representing that she owned or controlled these properties, and which GRANT claimed were available for purchase through her “source at the bank” at substantially discounted amounts, well below fair market value. GRANT fraudulently acquired deeds for a number of these properties by falsely promising the true owners that second mortgages or refinancing was being obtained for them or that GRANT was purchasing the property from them and any mortgages of the true owner would be assumed or paid. Instead, GRANT sold the properties to others, lived in them herself, pledged them as collateral to obtain loans for herself, or arranged for straw borrowers to obtain fraudulent mortgage loans without paying either the true owners and their mortgages or the new mortgage loans. GRANT stayed foreclosure on a number of these properties by filing and causing others to file a series of fraudulent bankruptcy petitions over a four year period.
GRANT could receive a maximum of 5 years in prison, followed by 3 years Supervised Release and a fine of up to $250,000. Sentencing will take place before United States District Judge Richard W. Story at a date and time not yet set by the court.
This case was investigated by Special Agents of the FBI.
Assistant United States Attorney Gale McKenzie is prosecuting the case.
For further information please contact David E. Nahmias (pronounced NAH-me-us), United States Attorney, or F. Gentry Shelnutt, Chief criminal division, through Patrick Crosby, Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Attorney's Office, at (404) 581-6016. The Internet address for the HomePage for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia is www.usdoj.gov/usao/gan.