It wasn’t difficult to dig some quick dirt on some of the co-conspirators indicted in the Multi-Million Dollar Mortgage Fraud Scheme that is now the talk of the town.  As I posted earlier this evening, four individuals, including North Miami Mayor Lucie Tondreau, have now been charged with multiple counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in order to defraud mortgage companies out of money.

This is not the first brush with the law for one of the people newly indicted.  Okechukwu Josiah Odunna, a/k/a “O.J. Odunna”, has been down this road before.  In a McKlatchy DC article dated November 21, 2010, Think you’ve read the worst about foreclosures? Read this, a Miami Gardens woman lived through a five year nightmare, was conned out of tens of thousands of dollars by everyone from the mortgage broker, title agent, a subprime lender and her own foreclosure attorney, and then ended up losing her home anyway.

In a complicated scheme, the mortgage broker offered her an equity line of credit for $50,000.00, then deeded her home to a “straw buyer,” who was able to secure financing on the $98,000.00 home in exchange for a $230,000.00 mortgage, all without the owner’s knowledge.  The mortgage broker “and his affiliates” pocketed the bulk of money, gave the woman her $50,000.00 cash, who was then stuck with a mortgage she had no way of repaying.  She eventually ended up in foreclosure and in a court battle for over three years in a vain effort to keep her home.  “A review of court records found evidence of misconduct at nearly every stage” of the deal.

The mortgage broker, Johnson Cuffy ended up “serving an 11-year prison sentence for grand theft, handled [the woman’]s refinancing in early 2006, using a strategy a state investigator described as “outright mortgage fraud.”  He faces up to 30 more years in prison if convicted of 16 other mortgage fraud charges he’s facing.”

The title agent in this fiasco was none other than Okechukwu Josiah Odunna, who is now facing similar charges along with the North Miami Mayor and two others who have been named so far.  In that Miami Gardens woman’s case, Odunna “signed the crucial deed transfers that [the woman]’s fraud claim rests on operated an unlicensed title company that stole more than $1.5 million from South Florida home buyers during closing proceedings between 2005 and 2007, according to Florida Supreme Court records.”

Odunna was also the sixth named in a long list of Attorneys Gone Wild! in a Broward New Times article dated March 19, 2009 about local lawyers disciplined by The Florida Bar for professional misconduct.  The article reported:

6. Okechukwu Josiah Odunna, of Lauderdhill, is suspended until further notice.  “He failed to record at least 17 original deeds and 21 original mortgages, exposing a title insurance fund to more than $10 million in claims exposure.  A Florida Bar compliance audit of Odunna’s trust accounting records determined that he misappropriated more than $370,000 in client funds.”  The Bar said he appeared to be causing “great public harm.”

Odunna is now being accused of committing the same type of mortgage fraud scheme, along with with former mortgage broker Karl Oreste, Oreste’s employee Kelly Augustin, and his radio co-host Lucie Tondreau, who all now face charges that could potentially send them to prison for a maximum of 30 years if convicted.

Unfortunately, this story is all too familiar to the untold number of homeowners in Florida and around the country who were suckered into the real estate boom and eventual burst, which ultimately led to the devastation of our national economy in the late 2000s.

Even more unfortunately, a good portion of the victims of mortgage fraud were from immigrant communities, where English was not their first language, if they spoke English at all.  Worse, they certainly didn’t understand the mortgage business in general, and many simply relied on, and trusted in, mortgage brokers who did speak in their native tongue.

I’ve been told by a reliable source in the Haitian community that as far back as the late 1990s and through the mid-2000s, Haitian radio personalities were advertising five and six bedroom “affordable” homes to listeners who relied on Haitian radio as their sole source of information.  Many of these homeowners suffered the same fate as the Miami Gardens woman, most of whom had little understanding of the contracts they were signing.  They especially didn’t understand that the initial affordable payments being offered by adjustable rate loans would later convert to a much higher rate fixed mortgage, with a monthly payment that would double or even triple within a few years.  My source told me that these homeowners were simply relying on the word of fellow Creole speaking mortgage brokers and title agents, and many ended up losing their homes because of that blind trust.

Apparently, former mortgage broker, Karl Oreste, and former attorney, Okechukwu Josiah Odunna, played a part in what my source decries as “Haitians preying on their own community.”  He explained that many of these brokers and lawyers are considered to be the power players in the Haitian community, and rarely do the working-class members seek legal help against their predators for fear of retaliation.

As an aside, my source reminded me of one such person who did speak out against the corruption to his own detriment.  The late John Patrick Julien, formerly a North Miami Beach Councilman and Florida State Representative, faced constant ostracism from his fellow Haitians, and eventually lost his House seat, because of his “disloyalty” to his compatriots.  The lesson learned by the Haitian community from Julien’s “excommunication” was to “sit down and shut up.”  Because of the fear of reprisal, most of the Haitian foreclosure victims did not fight back or seek relief from the courts.  They simply and quietly left their homes behind.

Karl Oreste’s co-conspirator, Kelly Augustin, was an employee of his company, the now inactive KMC Mortgage Corporation of Florida, which was located at 633 ME 167 Street, Suite 901, North Miami Beach, Florida 33162.  Augustin is now the administrator of Henriette Home Health Services, Inc., a licensed home health agency, which is located in the same building as her previous employer at 633 NE 167 Street, Suite 1009, North Miami Beach, Florida 33162.  The US Attorney’s News Release states that “Oreste also transferred a substantial portion of the funds to bank accounts of LTO Investment Corporation, a corporation controlled by [Lucie] Tondreau,” which now inactive corporation was also located at 633 NE 167 Street, Suite 901, North Miami Beach, Florida 33162.  The Division of Corporations reflects that Oreste was the Registered Agent and President of LTO, and Tondreau was the Vice President, before it was administratively dissolved on September 14, 2007.

This ongoing saga will be in the news for days to come, with reports being updated every few hours.  CBS Miami just posted a story and the Miami Herald also just posted its latest update.

Stay tuned as the story unfolds.

Stephanie Kienzle
“Spreading the Wealth”