Mortgage broker sentenced in money-laundering case

A Seattle mortgage broker was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison Tuesday for forging documents that helped several convicted drug dealers buy homes and property with drug money.

Todd Love, 50, pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to engage in money laundering.

At Love's sentencing in U.S. District Court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Roe said that "there was nothing honest and aboveboard" about Love's business and that it was permeated "with money laundering and mortgage fraud."

In court documents, prosecutors said that Love helped convicted drug dealer Robert Kesling qualify for a $722,869 loan on a Woodinville house by forging a letter stating that the $190,000 cash down payment had been a gift from Kesling's father and created a letter from a local CPA firm claiming that Kesling was a property manager who had hired the firm to do his taxes.

Love also falsified employment records for another convicted dealer, Bernard Casey, on a $290,000 loan for two water-view lots in Tacoma by claiming the dealer worked for a video-conference center. He then asked a relative who worked at the center to verify that employment.

Prosecutors said that Love also personally used $50,000 of several hundred thousand dollars a third dealer, Joshua Macke, gave him to invest in real estate.

Prosecutors said Love had special equipment in his office to help him forge signatures and that he used his mother and girlfriend to lie for him.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Kesling was sentenced to 17 years in prison; Macke was sentenced to six years; and Casey is scheduled to be sentenced in November.

Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com