Cherry Hill Woman, Parents Guilty Of Multi-Million Dollar Fraud Scheme

A Cherry Hill woman and her parents were found guilty by a federal jury Friday for a multi-million dollar mortgage fraud scheme.

According to the FBI, Silver Buckman, 37, of Cherry Hill and her parents, Vincent Foxworth, 70, and Cynthia Foxworth, 64, of Turnersville, were found guilty of bank fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud.

The scheme caused $3.8 million in losses to mortgage lenders, investigators with the FBI said.

According to authorities, Buckman, a mortgage broker, and her parents offered to help financially-vulnerable individuals save their homes from foreclosure but instead defrauded the homeowners and mortgage lenders.

Buckman owned and operated Fresh Start Financial Services in Mount Laurel and was an employee of American Home Lending as well as a mortgage broker for American One Mortgage. Her father is an experienced Realtor, according to investigators.

Between October 2006 and November 2009, Buckman and her parents allegedly targeted financially vulnerable homeowners and represented to them that they could improve their credit, save their homes from foreclosure, or provide them with money through Buckman’s lease buyback program, the FBI said.

The homeowners were told that investors would be used to temporarily refinance their homes and that they could repurchase the homes in one year, or once they regained their financial footing, the FBI said.

“The defendants also allegedly induced the homeowners into signing documents related to the sale and lease of their homes by their representations that the homeowners would remain on the title to their homes, that the equity from their homes would be placed into an individual escrow account in their names, and that new mortgages would be paid from the escrow accounts to establish their timely payment histories,” according to information from the FBI.

Buckman recruited her parents and others to be straw borrowers, submitting false financial and employment information to mortgage lenders.

“Once lenders agreed to fund the mortgage loans, Buckman prevented the homeowners from receiving the settlement proceeds and did not put money into escrow accounts for the homeowners. Instead, the defendants distributed the proceeds amongst themselves,” the FBI said.

Authorities say Buckman used only a fraction of the homeowners’ monies toward the payment of the mortgages obtained by the straw borrowers for the homeowners’ homes and thereby caused the loans to go into default.

The defendants each face between 87 to 108 months in prison plus restitution. They will be sentenced in January.