An Indiana mortgage officer faces a dozen felony counts after being accused of altering borrower data whereas working as an originator for 2 completely different lenders.
State officers filed charges in opposition to Laura Mickler in Delaware County circuit courtroom, situated within the Central Indiana city of Muncie, in early July. She faces 4 felony counts every of fraud, counterfeiting and forgery.
Mickler’s alleged crimes occurred between 2017 and 2023 when she served as a mortgage officer at Ruoff Mortgage and Movement Mortgage, with authorized motion taken after federal regulators discovered a number of situations of seemingly fraud on accredited transactions. She resigned from Ruoff after the corporate introduced up the infractions, along with her former employer later submitting swimsuit in opposition to her.
The official investigation revealed pretend checks, solid signatures and phony financial institution statements tied to Mickler.
Among the fraudulent exercise investigators found was inflated borrower asset values. In certainly one of Mickler’s mortgage approvals, a buyer’s checking account financial savings was listed as totaling $10,000, however investigators later found the borrower had solely $5.00 in her identify. The buyer claimed the $10,000 disclosure had been falsified.
Similar studies of false asset values appeared in a unique Mickler origination at Ruoff, whereas one other of her accredited buy functions talked about a consumer’s automotive funds had been being made by his employer. That declare was later additionally confirmed to be incorrect.
Following her resignation, Mickler moved to Movement in late 2022, the place she equally accredited mortgage paperwork that grossly misrepresented precise asset values. The courtroom submitting famous a Movement origination that confirmed a homebuyer with over $5,500 in money held at his financial institution, nearly seven occasions greater than the true quantity.
Since leaving Movement in 2023, Mickler has labored for native Indiana nonprofits and launched her personal enterprise as a self-proclaimed mindset coach and yoga studio proprietor, in response to her Linkedin profile.
The defendant was arrested on July 8 and posted $60,000 bail. Her subsequent courtroom look is scheduled for Aug. 11.
In the earlier 2023 courtroom case, Ruoff sued Mickler for “intentional, negligent and fraudulent acts to complement herself.” The firm estimated on the time that the required repurchase of the loans in query would exceed $1 million.
Both events later settled and voluntarily agreed to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice, which means the identical case couldn’t be retried.
