TAMPA — A former
Hillsborough County mortgage broker has been sentenced to 15
months in federal prison for his role in a scam through
which banks lost more than $5 million.
Jonathan Marmol, 41, of Odessa and Miami Beach developer
Mordechai Boaziz pleaded guilty last November to making
false statements to financial institutions on mortgage loan
applications.
Boaziz had purchased the Preserve at Temple Terrace, a
392-unit complex near Lettuce Lake Park on Fletcher Avenue,
and was converting its apartments to condominiums. He hired
Marmol to market the condos, some selling in the low
$200,000s, according to court records.
Starting in 2006, Marmol, Boaziz and others offered to pay
the down payments for the purchasers. Meanwhile, they told
lenders such as Wells Fargo and Wachovia Mortgage the down
payments came from the buyers. That made the applicants
appear to be better credit risks than they were.
The banks lost money when the mortgages failed as the
collapse of the subprime mortgage market burst the housing
bubble and triggered the Great Recession.
In a written statement to the court, Marmol said he accepted
responsibility for what he had done but asked to avoid a
prison sentence so he could pursue a second career as a
mental health counselor.
“Twelve years ago, I made a series of bad actions and
decisions that harmed people close to me, myself and the
community at large,” he said in the statement. “I am deeply
regretful of the harm and damage I caused.”
Marmol said he became a mortgage broker in 2001, but lapsed
into alcohol and drug abuse following a failed attempt to
secure the legal right to see his young daughter. During his
work as a mortgage broker, he said he “encouraged family
members to participate in what I later realized was an
all-out fraudulent scheme."
Leaving Florida, he said he was homeless for five years,
with multiple hospitalizations for drug abuse, before he got
sober, completed a substance abuse program and then began
volunteering to help others.
This year, he received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and
a certificate of addiction counseling from the University of
South Florida, where, according to university emails
submitted to the court, Marmol made the dean’s list.
That, he said, plus six years of sobriety and service doing
volunteer counseling, has prepared him for “a more
predictable professional setting” not driven by money but by
“values such as integrity and service.”
In addition to the prison sentence, U.S. District Judge
Virginia M. Hernandez Covington last week sentenced Marmol
to 36 months of supervised release and ordered him to pay
$317,304 in restitution.
Boaziz, 67, was sentenced to 90 days in prison, 36 months of
supervised release and was ordered to pay more than $5.36
million in restitution.