A New Jersey attorney and a real estate agent were charged withallegedly running a massive mortgage fraud scheme that caused more than$30 million in losses for at least five financial institutions,according to a criminal complaint filed last week in U.S. DistrictCourt in Newark.

Christopher Goodson, 44, of Newark, and Anthony Garvin, 47, ofJersey City, New Jersey, were charged with one count of conspiracyto commit bank fraud. They were arraigned on the charge on Nov. 16and were each released on $250,000 bond.

Goodson is the sole partner of Goodson Law Offices LLC inNewark. He also is the founder of the New Jersey Real EstateInvestment Club that purportedly has more than 2,000 members withan annual membership fee of nearly $300, according the club's site.The law firm and the investment club were not named or implicatedin any way in the criminal complaint. For more than 21 years,Garvin has been a licensed real estate agent and investor,according to his LinkedIn page.

From January 2011 through August 2017, Goodson, Garvin, and fiveother conspirators not identified in the criminal complaint ran ashort sale mortgage fraud conspiracy that targeted dozens of NewJersey properties with mortgages that were in default. As part ofthe scheme, the conspirators arranged simultaneous fraudulenttransactions on the same target property.

For example, in an initial transaction that involved the sale bythe current owner, the conspirators convinced a financialinstitution holding the mortgage to accept the sale of the targetproperty at a loss, usually to a buyer who was a conspirator or anentity controlled by the fraud ring.

Then, in a second transaction, the conspirators flipped the sametarget property from the first buyer to a second buyer, whotypically obtained a mortgage from another financial institutionusing fake loan applications, pay stubs, bank account statementsand title reports provided by members of the fraud ring. Thatresulted in the second transaction frequently closings forsignificantly more or even double the price of the firsttransaction.

Prosecutors did not identify the financial institutions, andthey did not respond to a CU Times request for additionalinformation.

Goodson, Garvin, and others allegedly rigged the short saleprocess at each step of the process in order to maximize thedifference in price between the two transactions and to keep thevictim financial institutions from detecting the fraud, accordingto the criminal complaint.

For example, Goodson allegedly concealed that he played multipleroles in the short sale transactions, including generating falsepreapproval letters from a New Jersey corporation he owned thatpurported to be a short-term lending company based inCalifornia.

These letters were used to deceive the financial institutionsinto believing that the purchaser – typically a conspirator orentity controlled by Goodson – had the credit necessary for thetransaction. The New Jersey lawyer also negotiated the fraudulentshort sales with the financial institutions, generated phony deedsthat backdated the closing date of the first transactions. What'smore, Goodson also was the closing attorney during some of theshort sales.

The conspirators disbursed the funds into various accounts theycontrolled to conceal their illegal activities and split theprofits, according to federal prosecutors.

The conspiracy to commit bank fraud count is punishable by amaximum potential penalty of 30 years in prison and a $1 millionfine.