Family facing fraud charges

A Newport Beach woman and her adult daughter are due in court today on charges of committing more than $16 million in real estate fraud by securing property loans for “straw buyers” who wouldn’t control the properties.

Sushama Devi Lohia, 71, is scheduled to be arraigned in Orange County Superior Court’s Central Justice Center in Santa Ana. Her daughter Suniti Shah, 48, also of Newport Beach, will be there for a pretrial hearing on dozens of felony counts of conspiracy, forgery, forging documents and grand theft related to their alleged three-year scheme to receive millions in property loans under others’ names.

Also charged is one of Lohia’s other daughters, Supriti Soni, 49, of Corona del Mar. Her pretrial hearing is scheduled for March 22. There is also a warrant out for the arrest of Dinesh Shah, Suniti’s husband.

Soni and Suniti Shah have already pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors claim that the four family members obtained 54 fraudulent loans on 29 properties in Orange County from June 2005 to October 2009, using straw buyers’ credit. A straw buyer is someone who is willing to let their credit be used to get a loan for a property he or she never plans to control.

The Orange County district attorney’s office alleges that the four owned and worked out of businesses in Tustin and Santa Ana, where they processed the fraudulent loans. They are accused of recruiting friends, family and employees to take out loans on properties countywide that they weren’t planning on using.

Lohia, her daughters and son-in-law would inflate bank statements and incomes for the straw buyers applying for the loans, prosecutors claim.

In at least one case, they stole someone else’s identity to get a loan on an Anaheim business, according to prosecutors.

The defendants also filed false property transfers with the County Clerk-Recorder from the straw buyers to themselves, according to prosecutors.

Altogether, the group obtained more than $16 million in loans through the scheme, prosecutors said.

Lohia faces up to 40 years in prison, Soni faces 26 years and four months, Suniti Shah faces 28 years, and Dinesh Shah, who’s believed to be in India, faces up to 19 years in prison.

Each defendant had sentencing enhancements for property damage greater than $100,000 and a white-collar crime of more than $500,000.