The former general manager of residential loans and two former loan officers at a financial institution headquartered in Southfield, Mich., Pleaded guilty to participating in a multi-year program to provide residential mortgages fraudulent under the low documentation bank’s advantageous loan program.
According to court documents and statements made in court, YiHou Han, 39, of San Francisco, Calif., Hao Liang “Frank” Hu, 48, of Chino Hills, Calif., And Amy Lu, 33, of Brea, Calif. , each caused fraudulent loan applications to be submitted to the financial institution, known as Financial Institution A, under the Advantage Loan Program, which resulted in the loans being granted. Han served as a senior loan officer, and eventually as general manager of residential loans, at Financial Institution A, while Hu and Lu served as residential loan officers. On several occasions during the plot which lasted from 2011 to 2019, Han, Hu and Lu falsified and falsified borrowers’ income and debt ratios, job titles, employment history and supporting documents, among others. As part of the program, they asked borrowers to fabricate deposit histories and transfer funds to third parties, who would then transfer them to borrowers as ‘freebies’ in order to disguise the true source of the funds and promote the trust. underlying. fraud system. Han, Hu, and Lu also knowingly facilitated loan approval for borrowers involved in money laundering and tax evasion.
As part of her guilty plea, Han admitted that she and her co-conspirators undermined Financial Institution A’s ability to implement effective anti-money laundering controls to monitor, investigate and report any potentially suspicious activity involving borrowers in the Advantage Loan Program. Han further admitted that his falsification of documents and material information on borrowers’ qualifications for the Advantage Loan Program was done with the knowledge and encouragement of senior management at Financial Institution A in order to ” increase the volume of loans made under the Advantage loan program, which in turn increased the bank’s income and the personal commissions of the co-conspirators.
During the plot, Han issued at least 1,288 advantage loans, Hu issued at least 825 advantage loans, and Lu issued at least 358 advantage loans, representing a total of at least 2,471 loans and over $ 876 million in credits. made by financial institution A. Han, Hu and Lu admitted that the overwhelming majority of these loans were based on one or more fraudulent actions and that mainly as a result of the granting of these fraudulent loans, Han earned around 3,381,355, $ 26 in commissions, Hu earned around $ 2,519,488.98 in commissions, and Lu earned around $ 990,847.58 in commissions.
Han has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire transfer fraud, while Lu has previously pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and bank wire fraud. wire transfer, and Hu previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire transfer. fraud. Han is expected to be sentenced on August 18, 2021, while Lu and Hu are expected to be sentenced on June 28, 2021 and June 27, 2022, respectively. Lu faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, and Hu and Han each face a maximum sentence of 30 years. years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after taking into account U.S. sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicholas L. McQuaid of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice; Deputy Director in Charge Kristi K. Johnson of the FBI Los Angeles Field Office; Chief Inspector Delany De Léon-Colón of the United States Postal Inspection Service Criminal Investigation Group (USPIS); Acting Special Agent for Francis Mace, Office of the Inspector General of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC-OIG), San Francisco area; and Special Agent in Charge Scott K. Redington of the Office of the Inspector General – Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Office of Consumer Financial Protection (CFPB), West Division of San Francisco, made the announcement.
The FBI, USPIS, FDIC-OIG and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve OIG and CFPB investigated the case.
Trial attorneys Kevin Lowell and Jason Covert of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section are continuing the case.