Rebecca Marie Cohn, a former settlement and title processor from Maryland, pleaded guilty in federal court on April 14 for knowingly making false statements to financial institutions in connection with real estate transactions.
Cohn, who is also known as Rebecca Marie Stanton, was indicted along with her co-conspirators in 2023 in connection to a fraud scheme intended to obtain over $35 million from financial institutions by providing false documentation in support of Small Business Administration (SBA) loan applications for the purchase of hotels, according to a press release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland.
Between 2013 and 2019, Cohn worked as a settlement and title processor for Residential Title & Escrow Co. in Owings Mills, Md., from 2013 to 2019. In this role, Cohn was responsible for managing real estate property settlements, which included creating, reviewing, and submitting HUD-1 settlement statements to banks. She documented incoming funds and payments for real estate closings and provided banks with proof of equity used in transactions.
While at Residential Title & Escrow, Cohn worked with co-defendants Mehul Ramesh Khatiwala, Rajendra Parikh, and Jennifer Watkins, who pleaded guilty to a scheme to obtain loans to buy and sell hotels. This scheme involved "flipping," where properties are quickly sold for profit. The co-defendants created shell companies to purchase hotels and then set up another company to buy those hotels at much higher prices. Cohn managed settlements for these transactions.
The defendants applied for loans through the SBA’s Section 7(a) Program, which required the business owner to invest some personal funds to qualify. From June to August 2019, Cohn handled settlements knowing the HUD-1 statements contained false information. She sent banks misleading documents about buyers’ equity injections, falsely showing these funds as new investments, even though they had already been used for other transactions.
On July 23, 2019, Cohn submitted a false HUD-1 statement for a loan from North State Bank, exaggerating the earnest money involved. The date of the settlement was also falsely listed, as the selling entity did not own the hotel until July 24, 2019, which Cohn knew, as she used the loan from North State Bank to help purchase the hotel.
Cohn is awaiting sentencing and faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in federal prison for making false statements to a financial institution.