As former President Donald Trump fights off New York Attorney General Letitia James’s accusations of fraud, a former Baltimore District Attorney, Marilyn Mosby, was convicted of mortgage fraud. Her conviction came on Tuesday, February 6, and Mosby sobbed in court as the verdict against her was read out. The verdict can carry decades in prison time.
As background, Mosby was the DA of Baltimore from 2015 through 2022. She then lost her 2022 reelection bid when it emerged that she had been indicted on charges related to her allegedly withdrawing funds from Baltimore’s Deferred Compensation Plan. At the time, she was indicted on both perjury and mortgage fraud charges.
According to the Baltimore Sun, which reported on the situation at the time she was indicted, the former DA had, while a city employee, falsely claimed to be suffering financial hardship during Covid so that she could withdraw funds from her retirement savings. The Sun reports that the withdrawal amounted to $40,000 and came despite the fact that, in 2020, her salary increased by $10,000 to $248,000.
She then used those withdrawn funds to purchase homes in Florida. Further, she lied on the mortgage loan application by hiding an outstanding federal tax debt and lied to the bank, claiming she would not rent the property despite entering an agreement to rent it out, to obtain a lower interest rate. Apparently, the unpaid tax bill totaled $45,000 and she claimed that she was a first-time homebuyer to get a better deal on the mortgage interest rate.
Mosby was then found guilty of the perjury charge in November 2023. However, the mortgage charge remained and she was found guilty of it on Tuesday, February 6. The Daily Mail, reporting on the matter, said that she began crying when the jurors cleared her of one charge, but then filled the court with a wracking sob as she was convicted of the mortgage fraud charge.
Mosby now needs to be sentenced. Theoretically, she faces both three decades in prison for the mortgage fraud charge and another decade for the perjury charge. However, The Daily Mail reports, it is unlikely that she will face spending all four decades in prison despite being convicted of the two felonies and will likely face a much reduced sentence, if she spends time in prison at all.
Adding yet another twist on the story, Mosby apparently used a financial slight of hand to transfer with drawn funds to her ex-husband, City Council President Nick Mosby, and then claim that she was gifted those funds by him to take out a lower interest rate loan on one of the Florida properties. Nick Mosby was not charged with any wrongdoing and remains in office.
Watch Mosby defend his conduct and describe the situation here:
Mosby’s defense tried to characterize the prosecution as being motivated by political or racial animus, The Daily mail reports, but the judge in the case found those accusations invalid. The jury, for its part, found taht Mosby consciously lied seven times on the mortgage application to get a better interest rate and knew that she was lying the entire time, WBAL-TV reported.
Featured image credit: By Edward Kimmel from Takoma Park, MD – MYD 0025 Marilyn Mosby, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49892214
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