A Laguna Hills mortgage loan processor has been sentenced to a year in federal prison for his part in a $100 million fraud scheme.
John Allen was one of five people sentenced Monday in San Diego after pleading guilty to crimes ranging from conspiracy to wire fraud and money laundering, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
The scam involved recruiting straw buyers for homes, then arranging $100 million in mortgages at inflated prices, with about $15 million going into the conspirators’ pockets, according to prosecutors, who noted nearly all the properties later fell into foreclosure.
The defendant, who is not to be confused with Costa Mesa Realtor John Clyde Allen, helped create some phony documents used to obtain the loans, reports the Associated Press.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.