The former owner of a New Jersey title company will spend the next 12 years in prison after being convicted of defrauding banks out of $1.1 million by using fake loan applications for residential mortgages.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, Mark Andreotti was convicted on six counts of an indictment charging him with bank fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, tax evasion, and failure to file tax returns.
In addition to defrauding the banks out of more than $1 million, Andreotti was also convicted of failing to pay more than $450,000 in personal taxes.
According to court documents, Andreotti was the owner and operator of Metropolitan Title and Abstract.
Evidence presented at Andreotti’s trial showed that in January 2010, Andreotti submitted a loan application to a bank requesting $625,000 to refinance the mortgage on his house in Wyckoff, New Jersey.
Andreotti used his own title company as the settlement agent on the transaction, and after the lender transferred the $625,000 for the refinance to Metropolitan’s escrow account, Andreotti took the money for personal expenses instead of paying off the first mortgage on the property.
Then, in April 2011, Andreotti conspired with a real estate attorney to obtain $480,000 by falsely stating that the money would be used to refinance the mortgage on the attorney’s house in Montville, New Jersey.
Then, just as before, the bank transferred the money for the refinance to Metropolitan’s escrow account. In this case, Andreotti kept $110,000 for himself before transferring the remaining money to the unnamed real estate lawyer.
While all of this was going on, Andreotti was apparently also not paying his taxes.
According to court documents, the Internal Revenue Service initiated collection actions against Andreotti in 2010 for unpaid personal income taxes.
“Despite numerous liens and levies and having five rental income properties in addition to his primary residence, Andreotti continued to evade his taxes,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a release, which added that Andreotti failed to file tax returns for the tax years 2010 and 2011.
In addition to receiving a sentence of 144 months in prison, Andreotti was also sentenced to five years of supervised release and was ordered to pay restitution of more than $2.1 million.
