Tammy Jones, aka "Tammy Taylor" of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, has pleaded guilty to wire fraud in connection with a mortgage fraud scheme. As part of her plea agreement, Jones will be required to pay $111,377.12 in restitution. The guilty plea was announced by U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Erek L. Barron and Special Agent in Charge Shawn Rice of HUD's Office of Inspector General. According to her guilty plea, in May 2011 Jones purchased a home in Brandywine, Maryland (hereafter the "home" or "property"). To finance the purchase of the home, Jones obtained a mortgage for $360,660 from Lender 1, which was backed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). In 2017, Jones sought and received a loan modification for her FHA-insured mortgage through HUD's Partial Claim Program, which is a loan modification program for FHA-insured mortgages. As part of the Partial Claim Program, HUD works to restructure the borrower's mortgage payments using a partial claim which allows the borrower to stay in the home. A lender files a "partial claim" with HUD for a portion of the outstanding mortgage balance and HUD makes payment to the lender on behalf of the borrower for that portion of the mortgage. In exchange, HUD receives a security interest in the property in the amount of the balance that was paid to the lender and the borrower agrees to repay HUD for the amount of the partial claim. Thus, the lender is effectively "made whole" by the partial claim payment from HUD. When the borrower sells the home, the borrower is ultimately responsible for the balance of the partial claim to remove the lien held by HUD.
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