There were 1,687 press releases posted in the last 24 hours and 402,124 in the last 365 days.

Oxford Man Pleads Guilty, Sentenced to Prison in Connection With a Mortgage Fraud Scheme  

BOSTONAn Oxford man has pleaded guilty and been sentenced to serve six to eight years in state prison in connection with a scheme to defraud homeowners and mortgage lenders by providing fraudulent documents in legal and real estate transactions in Greater Boston, Attorney General Maura Healey announced today.

Allen Seymour, age 53, pleaded guilty Friday in Norfolk Superior Court to the charges of Forgery (11 counts), Uttering (5 counts), Larceny over $250 (5 counts), Larceny Over $1200 (1 count), and Money Laundering (4 counts). Following the plea, Judge Mark Hallal declared Seymour a Common and Notorious Thief and ordered him to serve six to eight years in state prison followed by three years of probation with the conditions that he surrender $190,000 and 238 gold coins and a condition that he is barred from handling real estate transactions. The AG’s Office intends to use the cash and the value of the gold coins for victim restitution, pending an agreement with the court.

“This defendant conned homebuyers, elderly residents, and lenders for his own personal profit and robbed them of more than a million dollars,” said AG Healey. “We are pleased that he is being held accountable and serving time in prison for his crimes.”

Throughout 2017 and 2018, Seymour repeatedly targeted vulnerable homeowners, including elderly residents, in Cambridge and Brookline to fraudulently gain control of their residential properties and then resell them at a profit to buyers without the knowledge of the homeowners. Seymour forged purchase and sale agreements, power of attorney documents and other records in the name of the homeowners to orchestrate fraudulent residential sale transactions and gain control over the seller’s proceeds. Seymour then laundered those funds through third party accounts and purchases of gold. He also collected deposits totaling $550,000 from the homebuyers relying on his forged purchase and sale agreements for properties in Brighton, Somerville and Cambridge and stole those funds. In total, Seymour stole over $1.5 million through these various transactions.

In 2010, Allen Seymour previously pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years to two and a half years in state prison for a similar mortgage fraud scheme prosecuted by the AG’s Office. Seymour will begin his new sentence this week after completing the three to five years in state prison he was sentenced to for violating probation from this 2010 conviction. Seymour was arrested in South Carolina in 2018 for the probation violation.

Seymour’s son, Corey Seymour, and his former wife, Tina Seymour, were also charged in connection with this scheme. Corey Seymour pleaded guilty to Money Laundering and Conspiracy charges in July 2019 and was sentenced to two years of probation with the condition that he be barred from working in the real estate industry for knowingly helping his father to turn stolen funds into cash by depositing cashier’s checks through the accounts of third parties. Tina Seymour was sentenced to two years of probation with the condition that she is barred from working in real estate for assisting Allen Seymour with the forgeries and providing unauthorized access to notary stamps.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant Attorney General Edward Beagan of AG Healey’s White Collar & Public Integrity Division with assistance from Victim Witness Advocate Lia Panetta of the AG’s Victim Witness Services Division, Financial Investigator Patrick Cooney of the AG’s Financial Investigations Division and the Massachusetts State Police assigned to the AG’s White Collar and Public Integrity Division. The Massachusetts State Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Brookline Police, the Cambridge Police, and the Horry County Sheriff’s Department of South Carolina assisted with this investigation.

###