Man Pleads Guilty To Scamming LI Homeowners Out Of $568K

A Dix Hills man who runs a mortgage modification business pleaded guilty on Tuesday to stealing $568,000 from more than 30 homeowners in Nassau County, Suffolk County and the surrounding areas, Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas says.

Mark Savransky, 56, who operated a business in Nassau County under the name Mark Savran, pleaded guilty to second-degree scheme to defraud and two counts of second-degree grand larceny.

“[Savransky] preyed on vulnerable homeowners during the height of the mortgage crisis and swindled them out of more than a half million dollars,”Singas said in a press release. “In many cases, homeowners didn’t know they were in trouble until lenders started foreclosing on their homes."

Most of his clients bought their homes at some point between 2006 and 2009 and needed help in obtaining mortgage modifications.

Savransky allegedly scammed residents from: Amityville, Baldwin, Bayside, Brentwood, the Bronx, Brooklyn, East Northport, Farmingdale, Hempstead, Hicksville, Huntington, Levittown, Lynbrook, Malverne, Merrick, Mount Vernon, New Hyde Park, Queens Village, Richmond Hill, Riverhead, Uniondale and Westbury.

Between 2008 and 2014, Savransky promised 32 homeowners that after securing modifications, he would "hold their mortgage payments in trust and forward them to the financial institutions servicing the homeowners' mortgages," according to the DA.

He instead allegedly converted the funds for personal use. The DA's office said he used the funds for ATM cash withdrawals, credit card payments, child support, car payments, gasoline, travel expenses, restaurants, grocery stores, department stores and Netflix.

Here's how he did it, according to the Nassau County DA report:

"Savransky requested that all the paperwork from the bank be given to him and if additional paperwork was sent by the bank to the victim, he would demand that it be given to him immediately, preferably unopened.
The defendant then counseled clients to give him the monthly mortgage payment that was due under the modified mortgage. Savransky would inform his clients that he would make the payments on their behalf and, in doing so, create a record of payment that would prevent a lender from denying that payments had been made or from reneging on any mortgage modification that had been obtained. At the defendant's request, these payments were mostly made in cash or by check that would leave out the payee. Savransky would later complete the payee portion of the check, thereby giving him the means to misappropriate the funds.
As a consequence of the mortgage payments not being made, lenders started to foreclose on the properties belonging to the defendant's clients. When some the homeowners complained to him, some of them would receive a limited amount of a repayment."

Savransky was arrested in August 2015 and arraigned on grand jury charges in October 2017. He is due back in court on December 4. He faces a maximum sentence of one to six years in prison when he is sentenced in January.

Images via NCDA