Woman guilty in mortgage scheme

Alison Therese Arnold of Tampa was connected to fugitive Matthew Cox. She pleaded guilty and will work with prosecutors.

By JEFF TESTERMAN
Published November 6, 2004

TAMPA - Alison Therese Arnold was a Tampa loan processor with a young son, money problems and a deteriorating marriage.

A year ago she joined up with Matthew Cox, a former mortgage broker with a record for fraud, and things began to change.

In May 2003, Arnold became someone else. She appeared in Pinellas County with a stolen name and the credentials of a $94,197-a-year financial consultant. She and an associate rented a Palm Harbor home, forged a deed to take title to it, then filed simultaneous applications to take out three mortgage loans totaling nearly $400,000.

A few months later, Arnold used a new name, her son's Social Security number and another set of phony financial credentials to obtain a $147,682 mortgage loan in Hillsborough County. This time, the money was used to buy a Tampa home from Matthew Cox, the broker with the fraud record.

According to court papers filed by the U.S. government this week, Arnold admits to those acts and now faces a possible five-year prison term, a fine of as much as $250,000 and $355,000 in restitution.

Cox, meanwhile, has vanished.

Characterized in bankruptcy documents as the mastermind of a scheme to use false identities to obtain millions of dollars of fraudulent loans in the Tampa Heights area, Cox, 34, disappeared from Tampa in December. He was last seen in the Atlanta area with Rebecca Hauck.

In a criminal complaint unsealed in Atlanta in August, Cox and Hauck were accused by the Secret Service of mortgage fraud, identity theft, credit card fraud, vehicle loan fraud, money laundering and conspiracy.

Arnold, 30, was charged in U.S. District Court in Tampa in September with conspiracy to commit bank fraud, fraudulent use of a Social Security number, making a false statement involving a federally insured loan and identity theft. In an agreement filed Oct. 1, Arnold pleaded guilty to conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors.

Neither Arnold nor her attorney, Wade M. Whidden, could be reached Friday for comment.

Arnold is the first person to plead to charges arising from a local, state and federal investigation into widespread mortgage fraud in Tampa involving an investment company called Urban Equity.

The firm, which employed Cox as director of acquisitions, is now in bankruptcy court, and lawyers are trying to sort out ownership and debts for some 90 properties purchased under alter egos purportedly dreamed up by Cox.

In one case, for instance, someone pretending to be a certified public accountant named Brandon Green signed for five mortgage loans in Tampa, then disappeared. All five loans went into foreclosure, and lenders were never able to locate Green to serve him with foreclosure papers.

Arnold and Cox's ex-wife, Keyla Burgos, are listed as officers in a financial firm called Core Funding Group, which operated out of the Ybor City office used by Urban Equity.

In her plea agreement, Arnold admits to forging a deed with unnamed persons on a home at 2410 Falcon Lane in Palm Harbor and to filing false statements to apply for three mortgage loans. Arnold used the stolen identity of Rosita Perez, a Tampa woman "who had previously offended one of the conspirators," according to court documents.

"In nearly 30 years of practice, I have never seen better documentation of a fraudulent loan," said Tom Herson, a Pinellas attorney representing Steve Jackson, the real owner of the Falcon Lane home. "They had W2s, pay stubs, everything you'd expect. They're very talented."

Though Cox is not named as a conspirator in the charges involving Arnold, he was identified along with her by Jackson as the couple who leased the Falcon Lane home before the forged deed was filed and Arnold applied for the three loans.

In the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta, Cox and Hauck used a similar scheme this summer, records show. The Secret Services says the couple rented a home there, filed a forged document to show the mortgage on the home had been paid off, then used the real owner's name and more fake records to obtain three loans totaling $329,000.

In the charges involving the Hillsborough County property, Arnold admitted using the name Therese A. Blecker, fictitious financial information and her son's Social Security number to obtain a $147,682 loan in September last year. Arnold got the loan to buy a 1,287-square-foot home at 409 E Amelia Ave. in Tampa Heights.

The seller: Cox.

The vacant home at 409 E Amelia is two doors down from a Mediterranean-style, three-unit apartment house purchased by Cox. In 2000, he used a $9,500 down payment to buy the $210,000 building. Then, after several forged loan payoff documents were filed, Cox signed for eight mortgages on the apartment property totaling $994,750.

Lenders are now wrestling for the rights to the abandoned property in bankruptcy court.

Curiously, neither the deed conveying the home at 409 Amelia from Cox to Arnold, nor the mortgage used by Arnold to buy the home were ever recorded.

A lawsuit filed against Cox and Arnold by Paradise Title Co., which handled the loan closing, says the documents were somehow lost and never made it to the Hillsborough County Courthouse.

Jeff Testerman can be reached at 813 226-3422 or testerman@sptimes.com

[Last modified November 6, 2004, 00:56:27]