Edward Bohm, former president of sales and co-owner of mortgage lender Vanguard Funding was sentenced to two years in prison for pocketing more than $8.9 million from warehouse lenders along with two other former executives at the firm.
The United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York on Tuesday also ordered Bohm to pay $3.5 million in restitution and $1.5 million in criminal forfeiture for his connection with the diversion of warehouse loans. Bohm pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire and bank fraud in February 2019.
“With today’s sentence, Edward Bohm has been deservedly punished for his role in a fraudulent scheme that deceived banks that trusted and relied upon him as a business partner,” said Breon Peace, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
The case goes back to between August 2015 and March 2017, when Bohm, Edward Sypher, Jr., Vanguard’s former senior vice president, and Matthew Voss, the firm’s former chief operating officer, obtained more than $8.9 million of warehouse loans from lenders, including Santander Bank, BankUnited and Northpointe Bank, and claimed that the loan proceeds would fund home mortgages and refinances.
Instead, the trio used the funds to pay personal expenses and compensation and to pay off loans they had previously obtained through false loan applications, according to federal authorities. Bohm paid tens of thousands of dollars for his monthly personal credit card expenses and financed his luxury house, Peace said.
Sypher and Voss were sentenced to 18 and 24 months in prison respectively in 2019 and were each ordered to pay $3.5 million in restitution following their conviction on conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud charges. Both had admitted embezzlement in 2018.
According to a criminal complaint, unsealed in August 2017, Bohm and Sypher were both recorded discussing their roles in the scheme.
In one recording, Bohm said that the three wouldn’t face charges because their scheme’s targets were lenders, not the public. “At the end of the day, the s— we did wasn’t to the public,” Bohm said in the recording.
Sypher was also recorded during a meeting in the Vanguard offices in 2017. During that meeting, Sypher said that his role in the company meant that he wouldn’t be charged if the scheme became public.
