A West Newbury man was indicted by a federal grand jury in West Palm Beach along with nine others and charged with mail fraud and conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud in a loan modification scheme that authorities say defrauded more than 2,000 distressed homeowners out of over $7 million.
Robert Harry Bacon, 34, of West Newbury, was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and multiple counts of mail fraud. Bacon’s co-defendents in case, all facing identical charges, were Jason Andrew Vitulano, Peter Ian Brown, Christopher Francisco Duharte, Brian Fleuridor, Arthur Vincent Fogarty III, Neil Lawrence Sack, Gregory B. Small, Jeffrey Charles Leroy Taylor and Ajay Alexander Thuraisingham. All but Brown and Bacon hail from Florida.
According to the indictment, between September 2008 and August 2009, the defendants operated boiler rooms that collected advance fees from distressed homeowners purportedly in exchange for obtaining loan modifications for the homeowners which were, with few exceptions, never provided.
The indictment alleges that defendant Vitulano was the organizer and operator of FHA All Day.com, Inc. and two other companies, Housing Assistance Law Center, Inc. and Safety Financial Corp., which operated the boiler rooms in Boca Raton and later in Deerfield Beach. According to the indictment, Bacon was an operations manager who wrote and edited sales scripts, while the other eight defendants served as team managers of four to eight telemarketers who made thousands of phone calls to homeowners behind on their mortgage payments.
According to authorities, the defendants made false statements to the homeowners including telling homeowners they had already been approved or pre-approved for a loan modification that would save the homeowner a specific amount off their mortgage payment, reducing the interest rate and often the principal balance on the mortgage loan. The defendants, according to the indictment, routinely told customers that they had been approved by an “underwriter” and that they had a team of “expert attorneys” who would finalize the loan modifications.
The indictment further alleges that the defendants targeted homeowners across the country that were facing foreclosure, falsely telling them that the company would stop the foreclosure process and that homeowners could stop making mortgage payments while they waited for the company to finalize their loan modifications. FHA All Day, as alleged in the indictment, moved its offices and changed the corporate name several times to avoid law enforcement scrutiny and to hamper consumer complaints. Through the use of these and other false representations, the defendants, according to the indictment, induced over 2,000 distressed homeowners to pay upfront fees totaling more than seven million dollars to the defendants.
Vitulano faces up to 20 years imprisonment on each of the 20 counts against him. Taylor and Thuraisingham face up to 20 years in prison for each of the four counts against them. The other seven defendants, including Bacon, face up to 20 years in prison on each of the three counts against them. All ten defendants further face up to $250,000 in fines and mandatory restitution as to each charge.
