Less than year after Lucie Tondreau was elected on June 4, 2013 as the first Haitian-American female Mayor of North Miami, she was arrested and indicted for mortgage fraud along with three other co-defendants. Within a week of her arrest, she was suspended from office by then-Governor Rick Scott.
Tondreau’s then-fiancé, Karl Oreste, pleaded guilty two months later, while the other two suspects, Okechukwu Josiah Odunna, who acted as a title agent, and Kelly Augustin, an employee of Oreste’s company, KMC Mortgage Corporation of Florida, went MIA before they could be arrested.
Karl Oreste was sentenced to 100 months in prison. Lucie Tondreau was found guilty and sentenced to 65 months in federal prison.
The remaining co-defendants were never to be seen or heard from again — until now.
The United States Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Florida issued a press release today stating that Odunna was extradited from his home country of Nigeria and “made an initial appearance in federal court in Miami” today.
According to the press release:
According to the indictment, between December 2005 to approximately May 2008, Odunna and his co-conspirators devised a scheme to defraud and to obtain money by making false representations and material omissions to U.S. banking institutions. As part of the scheme, Odunna and his co-conspirators would, among other things: submit false and fraudulent loan applications and documents to financial institutions relating to purchases of residential properties, resulting in lenders loaning out more money than they otherwise would. These false statements to the lenders included false names of the persons who would be borrowing the money to purchase the properties, falsely inflated sale prices that were much higher than the true prices and false details regarding the receipt and disbursement of funds in connection with the purchases of the properties.
Odunna, who was a licensed attorney at the time, was also one of the directors of Direct Title and Escrow Services, Inc. (DTES). Odunna was the settlement agent in approximately 20 fraudulent closings of property purchases. To disguise the fraud, Odunna and his co-conspirators provided sellers and lenders with two different settlement statements, which included false information and omitted information regarding the sale price, the identity of the purchaser, and the receipt and the disbursement of funds.
Odunna’s co-conspirators, charged in the same indictment, included Karl Oreste, Marie Lucie Tondreau and Kelly Augustin. Oreste pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 100 months in prison. Tondreau, who was the former Mayor of North Miami, was convicted at trial. She was sentenced to 65 months in prison. Augustin remains a fugitive.
Authorities apparently believe that Odunna was the ringleader considering he could sentenced to serve up to 30 years in prison for his crimes.
No wonder he skipped town when he had the chance.
It’s anyone’s guess where Kelly Augustin has been, or even if she’s still alive.
No one knows or cares where Karl Oreste is now or what he’s been up to.
Since her release from prison in 2019, Lucie Tondreau has remained pretty much under the radar.
But at least the mastermind of this heinous crime, Okechukwu Josiah Odunna, will finally pay for all the pain and suffering he caused to his victims and their families.
Stephanie
