South Carolina Criminal Lawyer Blog

The United States Attorney office in Charleston, South Carolina announced this week the plea of Blair Witkowski in a bank fraud indictment. Mr. Witkowski, who was a mortgage loan officer in Hilton Head, will faces prison time in the face of this fraud charge. Under the federal sentencing guidelines, a fraud indictment provides that the amount of prison time a defendant may face will be based on the amount of loss the government is able to prove at the sentencing. There will no doubt be more indictments to come related to this case. Witkowski has undoubtedly cooperated with the government in this case. His cooperation will allow him to reduce his possible prison sentence. The more information that he provides and that cooperation leads to the arrest and indictment of other individuals, the lower his prison sentence will be. The major problem with all these so called mortgage fraud indictments is the key defendant is never charged. THE BANK is the key to all of these cases.
The government never indicts the bank, only the employees and the other low level players. Very seldom does any bank president, or bank manager get charged as a co-conspirator. The fraud cannot occur without their consent. No matter how it is viewed, banks made money off these bad loans and our tax dollars bailed them out and now they will not lend money to anyone. The government never investigates the bank to determine if they were allowed to right off the loss on their taxes and actually receive a benefit from the loss. The banks did no checks to determine who they were loaning the money to and what they were doing with the money. The banks wanted to give the money away because they could sell the notes to other institutions at a premium. A good Charleston criminal lawyer should fight these indictments and show the jury and the court that the key to all of this was in the bank's hands.
In Witkowski's case, he has plead guilty and will now do what he can to reduce his time. It would be nice if he would actually describe what the bank did in this case beside point the finger. These banks have a duty of due diligence when loaning thousands or millions of dollars. Clearly that was not done by most of the banks giving out loans in the past 8 years. Fighting a federal fraud indictment is difficult, but hiring a good federal attorney will make a tremendous difference in the outcome of a case.