WALWORTH — The former owner of a Lake Geneva real estate company has admitted involvement in a Walworth County mortgage fraud scam that led to the foreclosures of 18 homes.
Bradley W. Hollister, the 30-year-old former owner of now-defunct Titan Real Estate in Lake Geneva, pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court to a single felony charge of wire fraud.
According to the plea agreement, Hollister participated in a scheme that used fraudulent loan documents, stolen identities and straw buyers to defraud banks of millions of dollars when loans were never repaid.
The plea agreement lists only one transaction Hollister was involved in, but real estate documents show at least six of the 18 properties identified as sold in the fraud scheme had been owned by Hollister or his business interests.
Hollister admits to knowing the value of the home listed in the plea agreement was fraudulently inflated, his attorney Tom Halloran said. He can contest involvement in the alleged fraudulent sales of the other properties he owned.
“He wants to put this behind him and move on,” Halloran said. “That’s why he came forward at the beginning and said, ‘This is what happened.’”
In February 2006, FBI agents raided Hollister’s Lake Geneva real estate office and several other locations in the county as part of an investigation into the county’s largest-ever real estate fraud scheme.
The scam, orchestrated largely by mortgage broker James J. Lytle, 34, formerly of Lake Geneva, swindled more than $2.5 million from banks, according to federal court records. Lending companies were left without payment, unknowing victims had their credit ruined and neighborhoods were left with foreclosed, unkempt properties lining their streets.
Lytle was sentenced in May to seven years in federal prison for leading the scheme.
Co-conspirators Martin Valadez, 32, Delavan, in August was sentenced to six years in prison for stealing identities in the scheme. His father, Jose Valadez, owner of Valadez Furniture in Delavan, was sentenced to 21 month for acting as a straw buyer.
Hollister is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 29.