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Findel — who paid a record-breaking $400,000 for a pair of 50-yard-line seats last year — surrendered to the FBI on a single charge of wire fraud.
Federal authorities said the 44-year-old president and CEO of Worldwide Financial Resources submitted the same mortgages to several financial institutions at once, then pocketed the profits.
If convicted, Findel faces a maximum of 20 years behind bars — although chances are, by then, the Jets still won’t have made it back to the Super Bowl.
“Mr. Findel let greed beat him,” said Weysan Dun, the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Newark office.
“This is a man who had it all,” Dun said. “He had the skill and savvy for this business. But what I find most remarkable is that despite his wealth and success, it simply wasn’t enough.”
Dun didn’t say whether any of the allegedly ill-gotten dough went toward the tickets.
Worldwide Financial Resources, on Route 9 in Morganville, abruptly shut down over the weekend, putting 80 employees out of work.
Originally launched as a financial planning company, WFR “had been expanded by Findel to include a variety of home mortgage services, to include mortgage origination and banking,” the FBI said in a statement. “This allowed WFR to both initiate and fund mortgages for its clients by borrowing money from a ‘warehouse lender.’
“To repay the lender, WFR would resell each home mortgage it originated in the secondary mortgage market at a profit.
“Because of the housing crisis, WFR experienced a liquidity crisis in January 2008. That is when Findel perpetrated a scheme to defraud mortgage banks by reselling the same mortgages to multiple financial institutions,” the FBI said.
Once WFR sold a mortgage, it relinquished any and all financial interest. But the FBI said Findel created a new set of loan applications, promissory notes, closing sheets, settlement forms, etc. and resold them to a different lender.
Findel then used that money “to pay corporate and personal expenses,” the bureau said.
A magistrate judge in Newark released Findel on $1 million bond this afternoon.
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