Mortgage broker Patrick Ogiony has pleaded guilty to being part of a multifamily real estate scandal involving inflated mortgages, fake incomes and fake residents.
Ogiony, of Buffalo, pleaded guilty last week to conspiracy to commit bank fraud, according to HousingWire. He was accused of defrauding financial institutions including M&T Bank, UBS Securities and SteepRock Capital—along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—by giving them false information about apartment communities owned by Morgan Management in several states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas, South Carolina and North Carolina.
He admitted to giving lenders and appraisers false rent rolls where he overstated how many renters were in the properties or how much they paid in rent, encouraging them to issue loans for the properties that they either wouldn’t have issued otherwise or would have issued in much smaller amounts.
Ogiony faces a maximum penalty of a $250,000 fine and five years in prison. [HousingWire] – Eddie Small