A Brooklyn paralegal has been sentenced to two concurrent three-year prison sentences in connection with her role in a $200 million mortgage scam, according to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, after pleading guilty to charges of mail, wire and bank fraud. From 2004 to 2007, the defendant, Marina Dubin, aided a Brooklyn mortgage firm called AGA Capital NY in a mortgage refinancing scam, in which the company targeted homeowners facing foreclosure, offering to help them save their homes. Because many of the victims had poor credit and were unable to receive traditional refinancing, the firm told the victims to deed their homes over to a third party, promising to return the title within a year, according to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. The company ultimately brokered more than 1,000 mortgages before the scheme was discovered. The lenders, combined, have claimed losses of approximately $11.6 million. Dubin is one of 27 defendants in this case — 25 of whom pleaded guilty. Dubin was also sentenced in federal court to three years of supervised released and was ordered to forfeit over $7 million and pay $11.6 million in restitution. TRD

A group of 40 residential mortgage-backed security resecuritization tranches are facing possible ratings downgrades from Moody’s. The tranches, which have a current balance of $500 million, were all issued between 2005 and 2008 and contain subprime RMBS and other underlying securities whose loss projections have amplified in recent months. Moody’s said that it’s important to evaluate the elements that comprise the tranches, should a downgrade be enacted. “Because the ratings on the notes in the resecuritization are linked to the ratings on the underlying securities and their mortgage pool performance, any rating action on the underlying securities may trigger a further review of the ratings on the notes in the resecuritization,” Moody’s said in a statement. TRD