South Florida's housing stock was high for at least one team of mortgage brokers, who fraudulently invested in homes and turned them into weed houses.
Federal authorities claim a group led by Hugo Oliva used a mortgage fraud scheme to purchase houses in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties and then turned the residences into elaborate grow houses, according to the South Florida Business Journal.
Oliva, Robert Caro, Sergio Caro, Orlando Dominguez, Ilan Reyes and Manuel Caro were all busted and face 44 fraud and drug charges.
The mortgage-to-marijuana scheme was initially discovered in 2006 after raids in Port St. Lucie. Eventually, investigators checked out the titles on the homes and other grow houses in Miami-Dade and saw a common link: Oliva, who owned MBA Mortgage Services.
If convicted the men each face between 20 and 40 years in prison.
