Belkys Elizabeth Sherman
Fidelity Title &Trust Thief
Lake Worth, Florida
Sherman ran Fidelity Title &Trust, which in March 2008 performed closing duties for the refinancing of a property owned by Alan and Katherine Rosenthal, according to an affidavit from the state agency.
Her company received $174,000 from Wachovia Bank and was supposed to put that money into an escrow account and pay the property's existing mortgage holder, Fieldstone Mortgage, $150,000 to satisfy the existing mortgage, according to the report. But Fieldstone Mortgage didn't get its money and an underwriter for Fidelity Title had to pay off the $150,000 debt.
According to the report, an employee of that underwriting company asked Sherman why she didn't pay Fieldstone Mortgage and she told the employee that she had transferred the $150,000 from the escrow account into bank accounts in Hong Kong and Shanghai. She said her business partner had told her about a short-term investment that would return the money plus a 10 percent profit within a week, the report stated.