Reuters is reporting that Lisa Cook scheduled her Atlanta property as a vacation home on a loan estimate from her lender. That indicates that the lender was aware that the property was not going to be used as Cook’s principal residence. It’s going to be pretty hard to sustain a mortgage fraud prosecution in the face of the loan estimate.
Consistent with the indication that the Atlanta property was a vacation home, Cook didn’t claim a primary residence tax deduction for it (unlike what Pulte’s own parents did for their properties!).
If Reuters was able to unearth the Cook loan application materials, surely Pulte should have been able to do so. Either Pulte was wildly reckless by making the referral without pulling the loan file, including the application materials, or he proceeded despite having the loan file, which suggests that he acted maliciously. Regardless of whether Pulte acted recklessly or maliciously, his actions here are more than cause for his removal.
The Cook’s declaration of the property as a second home also suggests that if there was fraud—and it’s far from clear that there was—that it wasn’t by Cook, but by either the loan officer or her credit union. The loan officer might have wanted to facilitate the loan closing, while the credit union would have gotten a better price from Fannie/Freddie for a principal residence mortgage than for a second home mortgage. We’d need a lot more information to know if there was fraud and by whom, but if Cook had alerted the credit union that the property was a second home, I can’t see how this could rise to a criminal issue for her.