by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
White collar crimes are seventh on the list of most important crimes that the Federal Bureau of Investigation prosecutes. That statistic came from FBI special agent Janet Pellicciotti, who joined the Jacksonville Women’s Council of Realtors last month at their luncheon held at the San Jose Country Club.
Pellicciotti has been on the Jacksonville Public Corruption White Collar Squad for five years and her investigations included insurance fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, mortgage fraud and other public corruption matters. She’s also been a member of the Jacksonville S.W.A.T team since 1998.
There are 56 field offices for the FBI in the United States.
Pellicciotti shared some statistics with the group about her division.
“In the first quarter of 2006, 36 percent of our cases were public corruption,” said Pellicciotti. “Public corruption is a higher priority with the attorney general and the president so we have to burn a certain amount of hours — therefore, we spend most of them in public corruption.”
Twenty-seven percent of their cases were spent on healthcare fraud, 18 percent was spent on financial institution fraud and nine percent was spent on corporate securities.
“It’s kind of deceiving to say 18 percent on financial institutional fraud because we spend a lot of hours doing it,” she said. “We are pretty successful, but there is still a lot out there that we aren’t getting.”
She said when they do a mortgage fraud investigation there are lot of players involved.
“Some of the misrepresentation that the bad guys do are that they overstate income on the loan application,” said Pellicciotti. “Their length of employment is usually overstated. A lot of times they report ficticious employment and have people who will back that up and verify it. With occupancy, they say the borrower is intending to use the property as a rental, when they are not. The appraisal is almost always listed as ‘owner occupied.’
“As far as assets and collateral are concerned, they are usually overstated or non-existent. Sometimes, the collateral that they have is stolen or counterfeit. The borrowers’ debt and credit history usually aren’t fully disclosed. And a lot of times they assume the Social Security number of different people.
“Sometimes the down payment doesn’t exist or it is concealed in a non-existent land contract. Sometimes it is borrowed and disguised a gift letter that doesn’t really exist. They increase the value of the property itself to make up for no down payment and the proceeds in the fraud are for profit.”
In many of their investigations, they have found those involved in mortgage fraud are usually loan officers, appraisers, accountants, title companies, real estate owners and buyers.
“They have a whole team with them who insulate them,” she said.
She then gave more insight into the recently prosecuted case of Jacksonville real estate investor J.R. Parker.
“His process was to buy low, sell high, minimize the time between the two and lie and lie often,” said Pellicciotti.
Parker was convicted of cheating his customers and mortgage companies by selling hundreds of run-down homes at inflated prices for a profit. Pellicciotti brought video clips from their investigation which showed Parker signing other people’s names on legal documents and other illegal activity which helped to convict him.
Photos by Michele Newbern Gillis