By Joel Gilbert
How did Letitia James’s declare that she married her father with the intention to qualify for her first mortgage evolve right into a lifetime of mortgage and bank fraud?
All of it started within the spring of 1983, when a 24-year-old Letitia James and her father, Robert James, posing as “husband and spouse,” took out a real-estate loan for $30,300 from Kadilac Funding Ltd. for the acquisition of a two-story townhome in Queens. The mortgage doc, signed by each, listed “ROBERT JAMES AND LETITIA JAMES, HIS WIFE” in three separate locations. This was no clerical error.
At the moment, younger Letitia probably lacked enough revenue or credit score to qualify for a mortgage as a single lady. The fraudulent declare of marriage to her father allowed her to acquire financing she in any other case couldn’t have, an act that meets the authorized definition of mortgage fraud beneath state and federal statutes.
This deception set a precedent for her. As soon as Letitia found that falsifying private data may ship tangible monetary rewards with out consequence, the act of misrepresentation for loans turned a lifelong behavior.
A long time of mortgage misrepresentations adopted. Even after she turned the high-profile Lawyer Basic of New York state on January 1, 2019, James continued the identical habits sample.
In 2020, James bought a property at 3121 Perone Avenue in Norfolk, Virginia, signing a doc claiming it could be her main or secondary residence, quite than a rental property, to safe a decrease rate of interest. That misrepresentation not too long ago turned a part of the criminal indictment towards her for mortgage and financial institution fraud, carrying a possible 30-year jail sentence.
In 2021, James utilized for a $200,000 line of credit score mortgage from Citizen’s Bank on her 5-unit condo constructing in Brooklyn, however in mortgage paperwork James claimed it solely had one condo unit. Accordingly, James obtained a decrease residential mortgage rate of interest she was not entitled to, and averted the next industrial mortgage price and far increased closing prices.
In 2023, James purchased a house at 604 Sterling Avenue in Norfolk, Virginia. Per Sam Antar, Letitia certified for the mortgage solely after certifying in an up to date software that it could be her “main residence”, though she lived in Brooklyn.
Letitia’s father’s participation in 1983 not solely legitimized mortgage fraud in Letitia’s thoughts, but in addition created a strong mannequin of “household teamwork” in bending the foundations. Letitia’s “main residence” at 604 Sterling Avenue in Norfolk was a joint mortgage with yet one more member of the family, Shamice Thompson-Hairston. Letitia later informed a crowd that she made the acquisition with the intention to present a house for Shamice’s “youngsters”. Nonetheless, the “youngsters” had been each adult felons with lengthy rap sheets, together with Nakia Monique Thompson who’s a wanted fugitive with an energetic arrest warrant in North Carolina. To at the present time Letitia James is harboring her fugitive niece, a brand new class of crime for Letitia James’s personal rap sheet.
“I went to Howard College!” Letitia James boasted at a rally on the United Place Theatre on Oct 13, 2025. But even an elite schooling can not all the time undo deeply ingrained behavioral patterns.
When somebody commits mortgage fraud at a younger age, it will possibly set up a deeply rooted psychological sample based mostly on their expertise that fraudulent claims when making use of for loans can ship tangible rewards with out penalties. The preliminary act of deception, particularly involving household, reinforces a way of invincibility and normalizes unethical habits as a software for monetary development.
In a September 14, 2025 interview on The Point with Marcia Kramer (CBS New York), when informed by Kramer, “Trump has two grand jury investigations towards you”, James responded, “He’s introduced this investigation into my alleged mortgage fraud. As you realize, with the intention to interact in mortgage fraud, you want intent”.
James is appropriate that intent is a necessary component of mortgage fraud. Prosecutors should show past an affordable doubt that the defendant acted with intent to defraud. Protection attorneys usually argue that errors, misunderstandings, or lack of knowledge negate felony legal responsibility.
Nonetheless, it can depend upon whether or not the proof suggests James “ought to have identified” or consciously disregarded the reality. Given James’s 43-year sample of mortgage fraud, mixed together with her intensive authorized expertise and her public file as a defender of property laws in New York state, prosecutors are fairly prone to persuade a jury that James knew precisely what she was doing.
Letitia James’s story illustrates the highly effective psychology of rationalized fraud – how one minor deception together with her father, rewarded and unpunished, can evolve right into a lifelong modus operandi of felony habits. Over time, the boundary between being “intelligent” and felony turned blurred for James, warping her ethical compass and creating a way of entitlement.
The irony is staggering. Letitia James, a lady educated at Howard College and charged with imposing justice, together with mortgage legal guidelines, seems to have internalized the very habits she has prosecuted, together with the very fees she filed towards her most high-profile goal, Donald Trump.
Joel Gilbert is a Los Angeles-based movie producer and president of Highway 61 Entertainment. He’s the producer of the brand new movie Roseanne Barr Is America. He’s additionally the producer of: Dreams from My Real Father, The Trayvon Hoax, Trump: The Art of the Insult, and plenty of different movies on American politics and music icons. Gilbert is on Twitter: @JoelSGilbert.
