Two men sentenced for fraud
August 4, 2009 at 12:00 a.m.
Two former Rancho Cucamonga residents have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms after being found guilty of various charges for real-estate fraud.
Howard Jerome Edwards, 48, and John Christopher Foster, 51, were each convicted in June on charges alleging they got fraudulent loans in other people's names to purchase homes and cars.
The men fraudulently obtained about $1 million in cash and assets in the course of the scheme, which originated in 2005, said Mike Leibrich, senior investigator in the Real Estate Fraud Division of the San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office.
On Friday, in San Bernardino Superior Court, Edwards was sentenced to 20 years and 4 months in prison.
Foster was sentenced to 10 years and 4 months in prison.
According to prosecutors, Edwards and Foster befriended two women online in 2005 and later manipulated them into agreeing to use their names on loans used to purchase a home in Fontana, Leibrich said.
"Both these people were very trusting people, of course, and very nice," Leibrich said.
The men used the women's identities to forge other documents related to the home. They also used their identities to purchase two Mercedes- Benz luxury cars and a $50,000 Infiniti SUV, Leibrich said.
In the course of reviewing documents related to the Fontana home, investigators discovered an additional real- estate scheme being conducted by Edwards and Foster, Leibrich said.
The men used the identity of a Massachusetts man to buy a home in Gardena owned by an elderly couple, prosecutors alleged.
Neither the man nor the couple knew of their involvement in the scheme, and the profits generated in the deal were directed to accounts controlled by the defendants, Leibrich said.
At the June conclusion of a trial for the two men, it took a jury less than four hours to find each man guilty of 37 felony counts, including multiple counts of forgery, money laundering and unlawful use of identifying information, Leibrich said.