Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas announced that a Dix Hills man has pleaded guilty to scamming 32 homeowners, including homeowners in Hicksville, out of $568,000 in a mortgage modification scheme.
Mark Savransky pleaded guilty before Supervising Judge Teresa Corrigan to two counts of second-degree grand larceny and one count of second-degree scheme to defraud.
Savransky faces a maximum of one to six years in prison when he is sentenced on Jan. 10. He is due back in court on Dec. 4.
“This defendant preyed on vulnerable homeowners during the height of the mortgage crisis and swindled them out of more than a half million dollars,” Singas said. “In many cases, homeowners didn’t know they were in trouble until lenders started foreclosing on their homes. I thank the Bronx District Attorney’s Office, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office and the Suffolk County Police Department for referring these cases to us for prosecution.”
Singas said that Savransky operated a mortgage modification business in Nassau County, using the name Mark Savran. Between 2008 and 2014, he promised 32 homeowners in Nassau County and elsewhere that after securing modifications, he would hold their mortgage payments in trust and forward them to the financial institutions servicing the homeowners’ mortgages.
Instead, Savransky converted the funds for personal use, stealing approximately $568,000 from these homeowners.
Among other things, Savransky used the funds for ATM cash withdrawals, credit card payments, child support, car payments, gasoline, travel expenses, restaurants, grocery stores, department stores and Netflix.
Savransky’s clients were typically residential homeowners who had purchased their homes using a subprime adjustable rate mortgage sometime between 2006 and 2009. When the payments became more than the homeowner could afford, homeowners hired Savransky to assist in obtaining a mortgage modification.
Savransky requested that all paperwork from the bank be given to him and if additional paperwork was sent by the bank to the victim, he demanded that it be given to him immediately, preferably unopened.
Savransky then counseled clients to give him the monthly mortgage payment that was due under the modified mortgage. Savransky informed his clients that he would make the payments on their behalf and, in doing so, create a record of payment that would prevent a lender from denying that payments were made or from reneging on any mortgage modification that was obtained.
At Savransky’s request, these payments were mostly made in cash or by check that did not include the payee. Savransky later completed the payee portion of the check, thereby giving him the means to misappropriate the funds.
Because the mortgage payments weren’t made, lenders started to foreclose on the properties belonging to Savransky’s clients. When some of the homeowners complained to him, some of them received a limited amount of repayment.
This case was initially referred to the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office by the Bronx County District Attorney’s Office. Additional cases were also referred by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in conjunction with the Suffolk County Police Department.
Along with Hicksville, Savransky’s victims include residents from Amityville, Baldwin, Bayside, Brentwood, the Bronx, Brooklyn, East Northport, Farmingdale, Hempstead, Huntington, Levittown, Lynbrook, Malverne, Merrick, Mount Vernon, New Hyde Park, Queens Village, Richmond Hill, Riverhead, Uniondale and Westbury.
Savransky was arrested in August 2015 by NCDA detective investigators and arraigned on grand jury indictment charges in October 2017.
Deputy Bureau Chief Peter Mancuso of DA Singas’ Financial Crimes Bureau is prosecuting this case. Joseph Conway, Esq. represents Savransky.
—Submitted by the Office of the District Attorney Madeline Singas
