Ex-Fugitive Pleads Guilty to $7.4M Mortgage Fraud

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A woman who operated a real estate firm and two other businesses in Manassas pleaded guilty to leading a $7.4 million mortgage fraud scheme Tuesday, following her recent extradition from Peru.

Rosita Vilchez, 39, led a wide-ranging mortgage fraud conspiracy that targeted hundreds of victims in Northern Virginia’s Hispanic community, according to federal prosecutors. The mortgage fraud scheme, which operated between August 2005 and August 2007, generated nearly $7.4 million in fraudulent proceeds and caused losses of more than $15 million to lenders, most of which were federally insured.

Vilchez was extradited in June from Lima, Peru, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. She pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud affecting a financial institution.

According to court documents, Vilchez operated a real estate firm (Vilchez & Associates), a title insurance company (Pino Title), and the branch of a loan brokerage business (Mount Vernon Capital Corp.) in Manassas, all of which she used to carry out the fraud scheme.

Vilchez faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison when she is sentenced on Dec. 4. To date, 13 defendants have been convicted in connection with this conspiracy, prosecutors said.

Vilchez and her co-conspirators submitted fraudulent loan documents that falsified their real estate clients’ income, employment and assets so that they could obtain loans to buy property through Vilchez & Associates, which received commissions of as much as 6 percent of the selling price of every home, prosecutors said.

The Vilchez conspiracy targeted Hispanic clients who were not proficient in spoken or written English, and the borrowers often were unable to read their loan documents and were unaware of the false statements submitted to the lenders on their behalf, prosecutors said.

According to court filings, the fraudulent loan applications made it possible for the borrowers to qualify for loans they could not afford to repay. Most of these borrowers later lost their homes to foreclosure.