In 2003, Buford worked for Dynus Financial in the mortgage division and Neal owned Tri-State Title Company, when the pair became romantically involved.
Neal’s attorney Ted Froncek said Dynus Corp. owner Orlando Carter stopped paying Buford commissions, so he and Neal started pocketing money at mortgage closings the pair worked on together, to the tune of about $30,000. He said Carter — who is currently serving a 15-year sentence in federal prison on fraud charges — found out and threatened to sue. That’s when Neal wrote a check from her company’s trust account.
Froncek said Neal became pregnant and an audit of her company’s trust account revealed the missing $30,000. That’s when the couple decided to take out a $337,500 second mortgage on one of their homes and kept the money rather than pay off the existing mortgage.
In all, the couple conspired to defraud about nine lending institutions, between 2004 and 2007, culling approximately $2.8 million. Froncek said when the housing market bottomed out the couple were trying to keep both their businesses afloat — Buford had started his own mortgage brokerage firm after leaving Dynus — so they ended up scamming eight other banks before they were caught.
Froncek said contrary to court filings, they weren’t living the high life.
“Some of the documents say they used this money for their own personal uses,” he said. “The vision you got is two people driving around in Mercedes Benzes and taking lavish vacations to Europe and just living an extravagant life style. That’s not really true. They did use some money to try to survive, they primarily used the money to keep their businesses open and pay the nine different mortgages.”
He said their undoing was a divorcing couple they purchased one of their homes from. The wife reopened a line of credit on the house they sold to Buford and Neal. An eventual foreclosure revealed the fraudulent mortgages.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Barry said she could not comment specifically on the case, but it comports with efforts her office is making.
“This case is an ongoing commitment of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Mortgage Fraud Task Force, to address and combat the mortgage fraud problem,” she said.
Sentencing dates for the defendants have not been scheduled yet.
Contact this reporter at (513) 696-4525 or dcallahan@coxohio.com.
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