U.S. Department
of Justice
United States v. Frederic Alan Gladle
Closed Criminal Division Cases
United States v. Frederic Alan Gladle
Court Docket Numbers: C.D.C.A. 11-cr-01170 and W.D.T.X.1:11-cr-708-LY
This case is assigned to the Honorable Lee Yeakel, United States District Court Judge for the Western District of Texas, Courtroom 1, United States Courthouse, 200 West Eighth Street, Austin, TX 78701. Gladle was arrested on October 19, 2011 and is currently detained.
Frederic Alan Gladle doing business as Timelender was sentenced on May 3, 2012 to 61 months in prison (consecutive as to counts), followed by 3 years of supervised release. Gladle was also ordered to forfeit $84,010 and 63 prepaid, reloadable debit cards that he used to further his scheme, and ordered to pay $214,258.60 in restitution on his January 2012 guilty plea to one count of bankruptcy fraud (Count 1: 18 U.S.C. § 157(3)) and one count of aggravated identity theft (Count 2: 18 U.S.C. § 1028A). The sentencing arises from his role in a nationwide foreclosure-rescue fraud scheme that took fees from distressed homeowners in exchange for fraudulently postponing foreclosure sales.
It is important for you to know that the fact that the court ordered the defendant to make restitution in this case does not mean that the defendant has the capability to actually make restitution payments at this time. In the event that restitution payments are received from defendant Gladle, the funds will be distributed by the Clerk of the U.S. District Court in San Antonio, Texas.
According to plea documents, filed in the Western District of Texas, Gladle admitted that beginning in October 2007 and continuing until October 2011, he operated a foreclosure-rescue fraud scheme that netted him more than $1.6 million in fees from 1,100 distressed homeowners. According to court documents, Gladle used five aliases to avoid detection, including stealing the identity of at least one person and setting up a mobile phone account in that victim's name.
According to his plea, Gladle admitted that he recruited homeowners whose properties were in danger of imminent foreclosure and promised to delay the foreclosures of these homes for several months, in exchange for a fee of approximately $750 per month. To accomplish this delay, Gladle directed homeowners to sign deeds granting aone percent fractional interest in their home to debtors in bankruptcy proceedings whose names Gladle found by search public bankruptcy records. The debtors were unaware that their names and bankruptcy cases were being stolen by Gladle in his scheme. Gladle then sent unsuspecting debtors’ bankruptcy petitions, and his client’s deeds that transferred fractional interests to the debtors, to the homeowners’ lenders directing them to stop foreclosure proceedings.
Because bankruptcy filings give rise to automatic stays that protect debtors’ properties and assets, the receipt of the bankruptcy petitions and deeds in the debtors’ names forced lenders to cancel foreclosure sales. The lenders, which included banks that received government funds under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), could not move forward to collect money that was owed to them until getting permission from the bankruptcy courts. This caused lenders to incur substantial losses by requiring them to file Relief from Stay motions with the bankruptcy court. Often, however, by the time that relief was granted, according to his plea, Gladle had repeated the step by causing a subsequent transfer of another one percent interest in the property into a newly stolen bankruptcy, thus repeating the cycle. Then, when homeowners wanted to void the deeds to the unsuspecting debtors and reclaim their one per cent interest, Gladle would forge the debtors’ signatures on the reconveyance deeds.
If you have any questions about the case, and want to talk to someone directly, please call Special Agent Linda English at 562-983-1452 or at linda.english@treasury.gov.
A copy of the Information, Plea Agreement and Victim Impact Form can be found by clicking on the links below.