Friday, February 22, 2008

Pretty Unbelievable - Austin Realtor w/ a BIG Rap Sheet

I saw this on a thread at REW and was pretty amazed/shocked. A local Austin real estate agent, Mohammed “Mike” Gharbi just had his license renewed by TREC (last month) with the following record:

*Arrested by the FBI
*Convicted of 5 counts in a $15m loan fraud scheme
*Sentenced to one year in prison
*Ordered to pay $84,914 restitution

He was convicted of purchasing cheap houses, getting fraudulent appraisals to justify loan amounts much higher, and then selling the houses to co-conspirators at much higher prices.

Apparently, he is in the process of appealing his case, and has 2 more months to appeal his case to the Supreme Court. TREC claims that they can’t yank his license until/unless he loses his final appeal.

Original here

No comments: