Orange County woman sentenced to 45 months for fraud

A former Richmond-area branch manager for a mortgage firm was sentenced yesterday to 45 months in prison for defrauding mortgage companies and investors in a complicated, long-running scheme.

U.S. District Judge Richard L. Williams also ordered Stacey Lynn Chamberlain, 42, of Unionville in Orange County to pay more than $1.2 million in restitution and refused to let her turn herself in to begin serving her sentence at the end of August.

Chamberlain had not been in custody before yesterday, but Williams was clearly fed up, ordering her taken into custody immediately.

"I'm not going to give you any further opportunity to mess up the system," Williams told Chamberlain.

He told her lawyer, Mary MaGuire: "Your client has gotten by with everything she has ever gotten by with. . . . I want her to experience as close to a slap between the eyes" as is possible.

Chamberlain pleaded guilty in May to one count of bank fraud and one count of wire fraud and was facing a sentence ranging from 41 to 51 months. The terms of her plea agreement called for the 45 months that Williams imposed.

She was indicted in March on bank fraud, 18 counts of wire fraud and interstate transportation of money taken by fraud.

In early 2004, Chamberlain was a branch manager for the Richmond branch of Gateway Funding Diversified Mortgage Services of Horsham, Pa., and planned to buy a $489,900 house in Maryland without putting any money down.

That required her to obtain a first-mortgage loan for $440,910 and a second-mortgage loan for $48,990. Because her credit was bad, she could not qualify for the loans, so she used a relative as a straw purchaser.

The straw purchaser also had financial difficulties and could not qualify for the loans either, so Chamberlain created fraudulent income and employment information for the straw purchaser, and the loans were approved.

Shortly after Chamberlain got the loans she stopped making monthly payments, and the loans went into foreclosure.

The indictment also alleges that in order to win jobs and partnerships in the mortgage field, Chamberlain lied about her academic credentials and previous loan production and performance levels.

Relying on the lies, the employers entered into contracts with Chamberlain and provided her with "substantial funds," said the government.

"Ms. Chamberlain is really a serial fraud artist, a con artist," David T. Maguire, an assistant U.S. aattorney, told Williams yesterday. From 2002 to 2005, said Maguire, "she committed an amazing amount of fraud."

The case was investigated by the FBI and the Virginia State Police.

Contact Frank Green at (804) 649-6340 or .