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Press Release

Charleston Man Sentenced for Investment Fraud

For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, District of South Carolina

Contact Person: Rhett DeHart (843) 727-4381

Columbia, South Carolina---- United States Attorney Bill Nettles stated today that Vance White, age 49, was sentenced in federal court in Charleston, South Carolina, for Wire Fraud, a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343.  Senior United States District Judge Weston Houck sentenced White to 36 months imprisonment and 3 years supervised release.  The Court also ordered White to pay $629,000 in restitution to the victims.

Evidence presented at his guilty plea hearing established that Vance White was a mortgage originator in Charleston County, S.C.  From May 2010 through March 2015, White devised a scheme to defraud investors.  It was part of the scheme to defraud that White falsely represented to investors that he had clients who were attempting to purchase residential properties but who could not qualify for traditional bank loans.  White persuaded numerous investors to loan money to these clients.  The terms of these fictitious loans were a ten percent annual interest rate with the loans being repaid in full in three years.  White falsely represented to the investors that each of these loans was secured by mortgages on residential properties, and he fabricated the loan documentation for each loan to make it appear that the loans were secured by residential properties with sufficient equity. 

In reality, the loans promoted by White were completely fictitious.  There were no borrowers for the loans, nor any collateral to secure the loans.  Instead of providing the loan proceeds to actual borrowers, White stole the loan proceeds for his personal use, and he used a small portion of the loan proceeds to make the fraudulent interest payments to the investors in order to prolong the fraud.  During the course of the scheme to defraud, White fraudulently obtained more than $800,000 from ten investors for approximately twenty fictitious loans as described above.    

The case was investigated by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).  Assistant United States Attorney Rhett DeHart of the Charleston office prosecuted the case.         

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Updated March 18, 2016

Topic
Financial Fraud