The owner of a Kent-based mortgage company was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court in Seattle to six months in prison, 80 hours of community service and two years of supervised release for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering in connection with a mortgage-fraud scheme.
Jet City Mortgage owner Ha Duyen Thi Le, also known as Holly Le, asked the judge that she be able to avoid a jail sentence, so that she could stay with her children ages 3 and 6, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office media release Monday.
““I have no doubt the defendant loves her children… but she didn’t think much about them when she was accepting the money that was flowing into Jet City,” Judge James L. Robart stated in the release.
Le pleaded guilty April 17 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering as much as $230,000.
Federal agents initially searched the offices of Jet City Mortgage last year, in connection with numerous Western Washington homes where indoor marijuana growing operations were discovered.
That raid was part of “Operation Green Reaper,” a crackdown on indoor marijuana-growing operations in the Puget Sound area by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and numerous regional police narcotics teams.
According to charging papers, Le, working out of the Kent mortgage company office, conspired with others to falsify loan documents, allowing dozens of unqualified buyers to obtain mortgages and purchase one or more homes, according to charging papers.
When law-enforcement officers began investigating garden-supply stores that were providing equipment and advice to the marijuana-manufacturing rings, they discovered many of the homes busted for marijuana operations had been purchased using the services of Jet City Mortgage.
Defense Attorney Robert Leen told the judge Monday that Le only wanted to assist her fellow Vietnamese immigrants with attaining the “American dream of home ownership.”
But Robart disagreed.
“Sharing the American dream really meant pocketing a lot of money,” Robart told her, as reported in the press release, adding that immigrant families who were placed in homes they couldn’t afford would suffer consequences in the future, with a damaged credit history that follows them for years.
“She was a predator to her own community,” he said.
In their plea agreements, Jet City Mortgage and Le admitted they falsified income and asset information, as well as documents purporting to verify that information, for borrowers seeking mortgages. Le reportedly conspired with the owners of three small businesses to provide false information to lenders who were attempting to verify the information in loan documents. These co-conspirators were paid a small fee each time they lied to the mortgage lenders, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Financial records reveal the mortgage firm earned more than $230,000 from the scheme.
Kent Police are part of the Valley Narcotics Enforcement Team that joined federal agents in a two-year investigation of marijuana growing operations in the area. Police departments from Auburn, Renton, Tukwila and the Port of Seattle also are part of that team along with the Washington State Patrol and the King County Sheriff’s Office.
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