Four Phoenix area real estate professionals have been charged with crimes related to short sale fraud, earlier this month. This week, one of the fraudsters, Andrew Jemmett, pleaded guilty to making a false statement in a transaction insured by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Earlier this month, David John Dziedzic pleaded guilty to willful communication of unregistered securities and failure to file Forms 8300, Heather Hamilton Dziedzic aka Heather Cook pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting a willful communication of unregistered securities and unfair competition, and Jason Poyner pleaded guilty to misprision of felony.
According to court records:
David Dziedzic and Heather Dziedzic are licensed real estate brokers in Arizona that operated their real estate brokerage business through multiple companies, including Real Core Realty, LLC. Following the bursting of the real estate bubble in or around 2009, they began to refocus their business model on short sales of residential property with distressed mortgages and aggressively marketed a number of programs under the “Housing Angels” banner, including a heavily-marketed program where the Dziedzics tried to help homeowners stay in their homes following a short sale, through a sale-leaseback program with an “angel” investor.
Both David Dziedzic and Heather Dziedzic used straw entities and individuals under their control to routinely circumvent the mortgage-holding banks’ arm’s length agreements and encouraged homeowners to remain as tenants and, in some cases, to repurchase the homes.
Jason Poyner is the owner of Phoenix Property Group and is a licensed real estate broker. Around 2009 when the housing market in Arizona was in considerable disarray, Phoenix Property Group and its agents began to assist homeowners with short sale transactions. At that same time, Poyner was aware that David Dziedzic was also assisting homeowners with short sale transactions as part of his Housing Angels Program. Poyner was aware and acted as the real estate agent for Jaybrick, an alter ego company utilized by Dziedzic to purchase distressed properties. Poyner was also aware that false liens had been filed on Housing Angels properties in order to obtain short sale transaction fees.
Andrew Jemmett was an employee for David Dziedzic at Real Core Realty, LLC. Jemmett and Dziedzic placed fake liens on properties to be sold, typically for around $3,000, and in many cases the mortgage-holder agreed to pay all or part of the fake lien at closing. Real Core earned an additional $107,280 through approximately forty transactions with David Dziedzic and Jemmett splitting the profit from the fake liens.
The investigation in this case was conducted by Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation, Federal Housing Finance Agency – Office of Inspector General, Housing and Urban Development – Office of Inspector General, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.