Man Gets 26 Years In Mortgage Fraud

A man who pleaded guilty to a mortgage fraud scheme that affected more than 100 people has been sentenced to more than 26 years in prison.

Matthew Bevan Cox was sentenced in federal court in Atlanta earlier this month to the prison term followed by five years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $5.9 million in restitution and to forfeit $6 million in property.

“The Cox victims include innocent homeowners, individual lenders, corporate lenders, banks, title companies, closing attorneys and those whose identity was stolen,” federal prosecutors said in their sentencing recommendations.

“Cox stole the identity of 48 adults and 8 minors for use in his mortgage fraud, even going to court to change the true name of one such victim,” according to the filing.

Cox, 37, was arrested in Nashville last year after police received a tip from someone who had seen Cox’s picture on the Secret Service’s most-wanted list.

Cox was prosecuted in federal court in Atlanta in a case that consolidated charges in Georgia, Tennessee and Florida. Cox pleaded guilty in April.

The Secret Service said Cox used at least 10 aliases and may have had plastic surgery to alter his appearance while on the lam.

“His crimes resulted in clouded property titles in several states with years of unresolved litigation, a trail of over 100 victims and missing money,” David E. Nahmias, the U.S. attorney in Atlanta, said in a release.

Ed Yarbrough, the U.S. attorney in Nashville, said Cox stole identities by conducting what he called “federal surveys” of homeless people and drug rehab patients to get their personal information.

Cox then used the information to get driver’s licenses, lease mail boxes, open bank accounts, secure mortgage loans and apply for a passport he used to travel to Greece, Yarbrough said.

Authorities put out a warrant for Cox and his partner Rebecca Marie Hauck in 2004 for identity theft and mortgage fraud schemes in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina and North Carolina.

Hauck was arrested in March 2006 while living under a stolen identity in Houston. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years, 10 months in prison. She was also ordered to pay restitution of $1.2 million.

Cox’s attorney, Mildred Geckler Dunn, said in a filing that Cox had convinced himself that he wasn’t hurting his victims.

“He wrongly, but honestly, believed his crime to be ‘victimless’ because the title insurance companies would pay off the loans as a cost of doing business and no one would lose any money,” she said in a court filing.

Man gets 26 years in mortgage fraud
By ERIK SCHELZIG | The Associated Press