Man Gets 4 Years in Prison for Loan Fraud

A man who perpetrated a $600,000 fraud on two Encino firms by masquerading as a series of landowners in order to borrow money he said would be used for AIDS research was sentenced Monday in Los Angeles federal court to four years in prison.

U.S. District Judge John Davies imposed the stiffest sentence allowable on Robert Fine Jr., 33, of Hollywood, saying “this type of reprehensible criminal activity must be discouraged.”

Davies fined the defendant $6,820 and ordered him to pay an additional $5,773 in restitution to Imperial Home Mortgage Inc., one of two Encino lending institutions he victimized. The other was the Hanover Funding Assn.

Fine pleaded guilty Feb. 5 to one count each of mail fraud and using a fictitious name to obtain four loans totaling $613,000 in 1989.

The judge dismissed 12 other charges linked to the scheme in which Fine “assumed the identity of different property owners and used their land as collateral,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Stephen Mansfield said.

On at least two occasions, Fine told lenders he was going to use the money for medical research into a cure for acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

In court, however, Fine told the judge “the money that was taken was just spent.”

At the time of his arrest Oct. 31, Fine was wanted for failing to appear in court on charges in a separate $70,000 loan fraud scheme.

In an earlier case, he was convicted in state court in Ventura County in 1987 on forgery charges.

Mansfield said the latest case represented a refinement of Fine’s earlier schemes. “He communicated with the lenders only over the phone or through his network of phony addresses in order to avoid detection and apprehension,” Mansfield said in court documents.

Fine was arrested as he picked up a $181,908 check from Hanover Funding Assn. at a mail drop in Los Angeles. Investigators found in Fine’s possession numerous documents relating to the fraudulent loans, credit histories of property owners, fake identifications, plus $7,000 in cash and airline tickets to Mexico.

To operate the scheme, Fine tracked down vacant property, apparently by perusing lists at the county assessor’s office, to use as collateral for loans. Two of the properties were in San Clemente and another was in Marina del Rey, Mansfield said.

Fine then assumed the identities of the landowners and used their credit histories--which he obtained for small fees from private credit agencies--to apply for the loans.

To conceal the fraud, Mansfield said Fine “established phony business and home mailing addresses and telephone numbers for the named applicants using message centers and mail drops in Northern California and Los Angeles.”

With those tactics, Fine obtained three loans totaling $383,000 from Imperial. The scheme was uncovered after two loan officers, one from Imperial and the other from Hanover, discovered during a social conversation that they both had clients who applied for loans for AIDS cures. The loan officers then called the answering machine of one of the clients and both recognized the recorded voice as that of their respective clients, Mansfield said.

Federal agents then staked out Fine’s rented mail drop box in Los Angeles.