NEWARK — The $357,050 mortgage loan was out of reach, so to qualify, she turned to deception. Ijeoma Okoh submitted false employment records — even impersonated her boss on the phone — to convince lenders she was a $63,375-a-year supervisor in the Essex County welfare division rather than the much-lower paid employee she actually was. On Friday, Okoh, 32, who...
NEWARK — The $357,050 mortgage loan was out of reach, so to qualify, she turned to deception.
Ijeoma Okoh submitted false employment records — even impersonated her boss on the phone — to convince lenders she was a $63,375-a-year supervisor in the Essex County welfare division rather than the much-lower paid employee she actually was.
On Friday, Okoh, 32, who in reality was a $47,562-a-year family services worker, pleaded guilty to issuing a false financial statement, a third-degree crime, the state Attorney General’s Office said.
The Newark woman will likely face a one- to five-year probationary term when she is sentenced Jan. 18, the Attorney General’s Office said. She will also be required to forfeit her job and will forever be barred from public employment in New Jersey.
"She is a young woman with no prior criminal record who found herself caught up in a situation," said her attorney, Kevin McArdle. "In order to purchase a home, she misrepresented to the Bank of America what her actual salary was."
Okoh has agreed to cooperate in what Essex County inspector general Dominick Scaglione described as a "continuing investigation." He did not elaborate.
It all started on May 13, 2009, when Okoh filed a verification of employment form with the Bank of America, correctly revealing her salary and position. But the next day, authorities said, she filed the fraudulent one, with a letter saying the first form was in error because of a lag in record-keeping and that Okoh had actually been promoted, something missed in the initial filing.
To make it look credible, she submitted the letter on county letterhead with a forged signature of the division’s deputy director, as well as a fraudulent direct deposit slip reflecting the higher income, the attorney general’s office said.
Then, she listed her own work phone number as the deputy director’s and impersonated the supervisor when a detective posing as a Bank of America employee called to verify the application, authorities said.
The house she purchased — on Newark’s 6th Avenue — is to revert to the lender, the attorney general’s office said.
Scaglione said his office was first alerted via an inquiry from the lender.