A St. Cloud, Florida-based loan officer is accused of concocting child support documents, income statements and forging signatures of government officials to qualify borrowers for mortgage loans, according to an indictment published by the Department of Justice Monday.
Omayra Ujaque is charged with three counts of bank fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. If found guilty, the LO faces up to 30 years in federal prison on each bank fraud count and a mandatory consecutive two years imprisonment for aggravated identity theft. The DOJ did not mention whether the LO will have to pay restitution.
The indictment mirrors one filed in May 2022 by the DOJ accusing a Kissimmee, Florida-based LO of running an identical mortgage fraud scheme and forging signatures of the same Florida-based judges. It is unclear whether the two cases are connected.
Per the recent indictment, Ujaque ensured that unqualified borrowers were approved for mortgage loans by fabricating or inflating monthly child support payments on mortgage loan applications, the indictment said. The majority of these borrowers did not have children.
Ujaque is registered with NMLS as a loan officer, though her status is "inactive" in the database and her place of work is not listed. The DOJ also did not disclose her place of work in its indictment.
To run this fraud scheme, the LO created fictitious final judgments of dissolution of marriage and final orders modifying child support showing that some of her customers were entitled to receive non-existent monthly child support payments, in turn beefing up their income, the DOJ alleges.
Further, she signed said documents using the names of judges from the Circuit Court of the Ninth District of Florida. The LO also created "bogus" Florida Department of Revenue statements showing borrowers received monthly child support payments and manufactured phony prepaid debit card statements showing the borrowers purportedly withdrawing the non-existent monthly child support payments, the DOJ claims.
After doing so, Ujaque allegedly submitted this paperwork to her place of work to support the false monthly income on loan applications. Her undisclosed place of work approved and funded the mortgage loans, some of which were FHA loans, the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of Inspector General confirmed.
A spokeswoman for HUD's OIG said this is another example of "industry professionals enriching themselves by exposing the FHA to bad loans."
The Federal Housing Finance Agency's Office of Inspector General, HUD's OIG and the Florida Office of Financial Regulation investigated the case.
A similar indictment was issued by the DOJ in
Evelisse Hernandez was charged last year with four counts of bank fraud and four counts of aggravated identity theft for falsifying a borrower's income by including fabricated monthly child support payments on mortgage loan applications and forging signatures of judges from the Circuit Court of the Ninth District of Florida.
Hernandez faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted and may have to pay $130,000 in restitution.
