Fraud

In addition to Assault and battery, theft, driving, drug, and sex crimes, fraud is among the most common criminal charges in the state of California. If you have been charges with any of these common yet very serious crimes, you need a skilled and experienced California criminal defense attorney to fight to protect your legal rights and mount the strongest possible defense against the state’s aggressive efforts to convict you. Besides the damage to your reputation, which has serious ramifications on educational, vocational, and professional aspirations, conviction may result in jail time, fines, fees, community service, probation, loss or restriction of driving privileges, and more.

Types of Fraud

California is tough on fraud of all kinds. Fraud charges point directly to one’s honesty or lack thereof, usually in regards to finances, whether those of an individual, business, or the state itself. One of the oldest types of fraud – check fraud – is the manufacture, possession, or attempted manufacture or use of a check with the intent to defraud the party being paid. The illicit intent in check fraud is revealed by a representation that the bad check is actually genuine. If you have seen the film Catch Me If You Can, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, then you know something about check fraud. While check fraud is on the wane in the debit card / smart phone / Internet era, it does still occur, and is still punished harshly by the state.

San Diego developer James Delbert McConville and five other associates consisting of, a licensed real estate agent, a banker,and an escrow officer of a title company, were accused of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud. As of now, Mr. McConville’s location is still unknown and only one of the defendants has appeared in court. The scheme left hundreds of condominiums around the country in foreclosures many of these in Escondido and San Marcos in North County San Diego. Federal Prosecutors are refusing to release the address of the effected condominiums and possible developments they could reside in.

In this criminal scam buyers paid as much as ten thousand dollars to gain access to personal information of people who had good credit, so Mr. McConville could buy condos. The applications for loans that were needed to purchase the condo’s contained the false information of the buyers. Mr.McConville used the money he gained from the false loans to be split up between corporations. Interestingly, he also spent the money on fine pieces of art and purchasing rare comic books.

These six people face as much as 30 years of prison for each charge of conspiracy and fraud. The question is why! Is it in these difficult economic times people make poor choices concerning their financial welfare? Or is it greed that keep these people going above and beyond what they need to live? The fact finding process of the criminal judicial will bear these answers!

Articles Posted in Fraud

Fraud is a Common Criminal Charge in California

San Diego Developer Involved in Criminal Loan Scheme