Feds to mortgage banker: We want your giant bag of money

[n2doc]

By LEVI PULKKINEN
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Alleging a long-running fraud involving a cash-packed safe and a garbage bag stuffed with money, federal prosecutors have asked that a bank executive accused of fraudulently brokering mortgages be forced to hand over $102,000 to the government.

In the civil complaint filed late last month, federal prosecutors claim ex-bank executive Shawn Portmann has been the subject of a yearlong inter-agency investigation into his former employer, Tacoma-based Pierce Commercial Bank.

Writing the court, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Lord noted that Portmann and two others with Pierce Commercial Bank's home loans division are suspected of falsifying thousands of mortgage loan applications and, in doing so, pocketing large premium payments from lenders.

Since June 2009, Lord argued, investigators came to believe "that Portmann and two other principals at (Pierce Commercial Bank) Home Loans had devised a scheme involving … materially false representations to induce financial institutions to fund and/or purchase loans."
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