As a Garden City loan officer, Anita Bareja approved applications like the one from a purported sales manager earning $15,000 a month, prosecutors said Friday.
In reality the borrower was a welder earning $11 an hour -- and a partner in Bareja's scheme to steal money from banks through fraudulent mortgage applications, according to a release from Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice's office.
Bareja, 35, of Dix Hills, pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of grand larceny and forgery charges in First District Court in Hempstead. She was held on $20,000 bond, or $10,000 cash, and due back in court May 26.
A message for Bareja's lawyer Neil Greenberg was not immediately returned.
Prosecutors say Bareja approved at least three false loan applications from co-conspirators, based on what she knew to be falsified bank and employment information, and took an estimated $500,000 in profit, Rice said.
Two co-conspirators are to be arrested soon, according to a spokesman for Rice. No further details were available.
On top of lying about the co-conspirators' salary information, the mortgage applications included forged house appraisals to inflate the amount of the loans, Rice said.
Bareja faces two counts of second-degree grand larceny, three counts of first-degree falsification of business records, one count of first-degree scheme to defraud, and four counts of third-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument.
In May 2006, Bareja, while working at EFI Capital Corp., and her co-conspirators, used falsified employment records, financial information and bogus appraisals to obtain more than $1.5 million in fraudulent mortgages, Rice said.
Once Bareja approved the loan for the inflated sale price, she and her co-conspirators would profit from the difference, Rice said. They then defaulted on the loans and sent the newly purchased home into immediate foreclosure.
The investigation is ongoing.
Tags: Loan,money,debt,insurance,economic,bank
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