Broward attorneys face charges in scheme to steal foreclosure surplus checks
Two Broward attorneys are behind bars for their involvement in a nearly $750,000 fraud scheme to rip off unsuspecting victims of foreclosure surplus checks, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office.
The attorneys, Rashisa Overby and Ria Sankar-Balram, worked with Illya and Patricia Tinker, a married couple nicknamed “tomb raiders” for another multimillion-dollar scheme in which they stole properties across South Florida, some of which belonged to the dead.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office arrested Overby and Sankar-Balram Monday.
The attorneys filed fraudulent pleadings in Broward County Court, claiming they represented elderly property owners or heirs of deceased property owners who were owed surplus money from the foreclosure sale of a property, authorities said.
After judges granted the pleadings, those funds never made it to the rightful owners. Instead, the money went into the attorneys’ escrow accounts, and some of it was wired to the Tinkers’ bank accounts, authorities said.
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