Man tricked borrowers into paying down his own home loan

A former Lafayette, La., loan originator faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine after pleading guilty to mail fraud.

Jarvis Fontenette, 36, worked as a loan originator for Southern Mortgage Co., which brokered home loan applications to mortgage lenders. As part of his job preparing documents for borrowers seeking home loans, Fontenenette would insert the bank holding his own home loan, New South Federal Savings Bank, as a creditor in the loan documents of unsuspecting borrowers.

Fontenette would then intercept checks issued to New South and use them to pay his own home loan, according to a press release issued by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Louisiana.

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