Former California Mortgage Exec Must Pay Huge Fine

A former California mortgage company executive was ordered to pay an enormous fine - $6.7 million - to home loan lenders and the elderly, minority and bad credit clients he defrauded.

Tony Daniloo, former president and CEO of DreamLife Financial, based in Modesto, Calif., was sentenced last month to seven and a half years in federal prison after pleading guilty to 122 counts of mortgage fraud.

The charges he pled guilty to also included money laundering.

“This is full restitution,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Wang. “Essentially, every dollar of loss, (Daniloo) has to pay back.”

It still isn’t clear how many victims of his illicit California home loan fraudulent actions are owned money, officials told the Merced Sun-Star on Monday.

Two weeks ago, Daniloo was ordered to repay East Bay victims $1.34 million for a scheme he ran there before moving to Turlock in 2003.

There, he bilked friends, neighbors, an Alzheimer’s patient and others out of millions of dollars, according to lawsuits.

Daniloo admitted to using the identities of his father and father-in-law to buy houses and steal the new home mortgage loan funds.

Clearly, the huge run-up in California home prices over the first half of the decade - and the subsequent drop-off - have sparked widespread abuse. This won’t be the last case of this ilk we hear about.

SOURCE: Merced Sun-Star