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In the following To view links in this forum your post count must be 10 or greater. Your post count is 0 momentarily.Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum today announced that his office has filed criminal charges against an active mortgage fraud ring in South Florida. Nine individuals, including the previously convicted Boca Raton ringleader, are charged with criminal racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering and multiple counts of grand theft. The criminal ring allegedly used straw buyers and shell companies to defraud various lenders out of at least $1 million.
The criminal charges, filed in the 17th Judicial Circuit by the Attorney General’s Office of Statewide Prosecution, name ringleader Johnson Cuffy and co-defendants Lillia Cuffy, Cliff Johnson, Joy Williams, Frumence Paul, Hans Jeanty, Lloyd Gelu, Paula Augustus and Charles Reynolds. Authorities believe the targets of the scheme were numerous financial institutions including SunTrust Bank, Wachovia Bank, Bank of America and General Motors Acceptance Corp. (GMAC).
Using his co-defendants as straw buyers, Johnson Cuffy would apply for mortgages from the various lenders, thereby obtaining properties by fraudulent means. Once the mortgage loans were secure, the co-defendants would pose as the property owners and request additional home equity lines of credit from the lenders. The participants kept portions of the proceeds and laundered the remaining funds through non-existent companies to Johnson Cuffy, who used his companies – BlueKap Financial and Capitol Investment Group – to disguise his financial dealings.
The case will be prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Office of Statewide Prosecution and was investigated by the Department of Financial Services’ Division of Insurance Fraud. Cuffy, who was serving probation in Broward County for second-degree grand theft related to mortgage fraud, has been taken into custody along with Lillia Cuffy, Paula Augustus and Charles Reynolds. The other co-defendants are being sought on active criminal warrants. If convicted, they could face sentences ranging from 24 to 420 years in prison.
In another To view links in this forum your post count must be 10 or greater. Your post count is 0 momentarily.regarding Johnson Cuffy and Joy Williams it was announced that on Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 1:35 p.m., officers of the Boca Raton Police Services Department responded to a fraud investigation at Chase Bank, 225 NE Mizner Boulevard. A manager at the bank told officers that a black female, identified as Joy Williams, was recognized by a bank employee as having cashed a check for $2,300 the previous day and returned today attempting to cash a check for $2,500, both drawn on a fraudulent account. Bank officials were alerted earlier in the day by the victim in New York, who told them her identity had been stolen. Her personal information was used to apply for a loan and a premier checking account, from which these checks were drawn.
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Boca Raton officers located William’s car in the parking garage near the bank entrance and it was occupied by a female passenger. Boca Raton officers searched the vehicle and found identification belonging to Williams, $1,000 in cash, recent bank deposit tickets, and a piece of paper with two business names, addresses, and account numbers written down. Williams stated someone was on the way to the bank to explain the situation. A short time later black male Johnson Cuffy arrived at the bank. Cuffy and Williams gave conflicting accounts about their involvement and how they obtained the checks. Williams and Cuffy were charged with uttering a forged check, grand theft, and organized scheme to defraud.
WPBF TV25 reports that Boca Raton police spokeswoman Sandra Boonenberg said “The mortgage situation that everybody’s in, when you have people preying on people’s identity and the predatory lending practices and so forth, it becomes on a much larger scale as we’re all seeing.”

• WPBF 25 Video: To view links in this forum your post count must be 10 or greater. Your post count is 0 momentarily.

Sources said this will not be the Cuffy family’s last run-in with the law, WPBF News 25’s Cathleen O’Toole said. Several different detectives are investigating Johnson Cuffy and at least one other family member in a mortgage fraud investigation.”If anyone has been a victim of this type of crime, he is behind bars, he is not going to be getting out, and they need to come forward,” Boonenberg said.
Cuffy, who is on probation for grand theft and mortgage fraud, was also charged with violation of probation. Cuffy is being held at the Palm Beach County Jail without bond. Boca Raton detectives are working on the case in conjunction with investigators from the State of Florida Department of Financial Services. Anyone who may have been victimized by Cuffy or Williams is asked to call State of Florida Department of Financial Services Detective Steven Grenier at (561) 837-5632.


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