Brooklyn, NY- NYPD Nabs Fugitive In $12M Mortgage Scam

Flatbush, Brooklyn, NY - A fugitive that was the mastermind of an elaborate $12 million mortgage fraud scheme was captured in Brooklyn by detectives. Owen Larman, 33, indicted in August for allegedly orchestrating 33 fraudulent mortgages, was stunned when he was grabbed by detectives from the NYPD-U.S. Marshals Regional Fugitive Task Force.

"How'd you find me?" he asked the detectives who busted him just after he parked his Jeep Cherokee Laredo outside 353 Ocean Ave. Larman, distinctly overweight last summer, had lost more than 30 pounds and shaved his beard.

Larman was using the alias Christopher Larken and planned to open a summer day camp run out of the Ocean Ave. address. "We didn't tell him how we found him," said Detectives Collucci and Intrator, who made the arrest.

Larman is charged with defrauding seven banks and mortgage companies in the past six years by falsifying documents to pump up the values of Brooklyn buildings he was buying and selling. Working with six accomplices, including a phony building appraiser, Larman inflated the value of buildings through a series of paper sales, according to Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes, he was targeting buildings in Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick.