Woman sentenced to six months in prison for arranging fraudulent mortgages

The co-owner of a now-defunct mortgage brokerage in Kent was sentenced to six months in federal prison Monday for arranging fraudulent mortgages for dozens of homes, some of which ended up being used as marijuana greenhouses.

Ha-Duyen Thi "Holly" Le, who owned Jet City Mortgage along with her husband, Tan My Doan, was ensnared last year in "Operation Green Reaper," a major bust of a South King County marijuana-growing operation.

More than a dozen people were arrested in a series of raids, and about 15,000 pot plants were seized. Federal agents determined that about eight of the houses used for the indoor gardens had been purchased through bogus loans handled by Jet City Mortgage.

Prosecutors then determined that the company had secured about 24 home loans by submitting false statements of borrowers' income, employment and other information.

The mortgage company was itself prosecuted, and U.S. District Judge James Robart levied a $307,000 fine against it, which the government intends to pursue from Doan.

Doan wasn't prosecuted because his name was not on any of the fraudulent loan documents, said Emily Langlie, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle.

In seeking the six-month sentence for Le, prosecutors acknowledged that there was no evidence that she knew some houses would be used for pot growing, but she nonetheless profited from the loan scheme.

Le pleaded for home detention and community service instead, citing her two young children. She said she only had intended to help her fellow immigrants reach the American dream of homeownership.

"It is not an exaggeration to say that Holly is now a broken woman," her attorney, Robert Leen of Seattle, wrote to the judge. "She feels like all that was once good in her life ... is lost."

But Robart called her a "predator in her own community" because she ended up permanently damaging the finances of immigrants who got loans they couldn't afford and lost their homes.

"I have no doubt that the defendant loves her children." Robart said. "But she didn't think much about them when she was accepting the money that was flowing into Jet City."