Atari was detained after local officials contacted INTERPOL for assistance. She is in a Turkish prison awaiting extradition. Authorities had previously believed she was in Jordan, where her ex-husband has family.
“We have just received notification that she was apprehended; we haven’t received too many details,” said Kraig Troxell, public information officer for the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office. Now starts the extradition process to bring Atari back to the U.S., which, because it was an international ordeal, can take several months, Troxell said.
Atari, 42, is accused of fraudulently fixing clients’ credit and inflating their income on financial records – enabling them to be approved for higher credit so these clients could buy homes they could not otherwise afford.
She was indicted on ten counts of using false statements to obtain credit, one count of money laundering and one count of racketeering on July 13.
Atari faces up to 40 years in prison for racketeering, up to 40 years for money laundering and up to 20 years for each count of mortgage fraud, totaling up to 280 years behind bars.
The charges against her are local, so she will be heard in the Loudoun County courts when she is brought back to the U.S., Troxell said.
This year-long investigation against Atari was a joint effort between the Financial Crimes Unit of the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office and the Virginia Attorney General’s Financial Crimes Intelligence Center.
Atari allegedly obtained more than $1 million in commissions through this scheme, and took advantage of more than 100 potential homebuyers, most of whom had bad credit.
The total loss on the fraudulently obtained mortgages is estimated to be more than $50 million, said Troxell. The long-term effect is going to be huge, according to investigators.
Her Scheme
Atari, owner and operator of ACR Consulting Company and Atari Management Company, both located in Loudoun County, offered “rent-to-own” services for customers looking to become homeowners. These customers were generally unable to qualify for mortgages due to bad credit or low income. Atari allegedly signed agreements with these mortgage victims with the understanding that the company would try to fix the victims’ credit. However, some of her victims did not speak English, investigators said.
Atari initially offered the clients an agreement for no up-front charges, with money only exchanged at the mortgage closing. Eventually, Atari began charging the clients an up-front fee to cover expenses, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office said. She only accepted clients whose credit she could manipulate.
She supposedly worked with her clients’ creditors to pay off the debt, most of the time at less than face value, usually out of Atari’s own funds. Upon closing of the home, the clients would return the money to Atari.
Atari also allegedly obtained false credit for her clients by having credit card companies add them as “authorized users” of credits cards of her associates with excellent credit, helping to increase the clients’ FICO score. This enabled the clients to apply for a mortgage.
During this time, Atari was also supposedly “repairing” the clients’ reportable income, falsifying financial documents to inflate their financial status to the point that they could qualify for a mortgage. In some cases, Atari even deposited her own money into clients’ bank accounts to show high balances and created false employment documents.
Upon sale of the property, Atari would receive any money she fronted her client, a fee for the credit repair and a commission, which was typically $10,000 to $15,000 per house.
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I hope waiting in a Turkish prison for months feels like years to her. Nabbing her relative of B-Wing infamy for his 40 million fraud should set the stage for some entertaing courttv drama here in Loudoun next year.