A former Texas mortgage broker was among three co-conspirators in a mortgage and government loan fraud scheme who were finally arrested after avoiding law enforcement for several months, the U.S Department of Justice reported.

Heather Ann Campos, 43; David Lewis Best Jr., 56; and Stephen Laverne Crabtree, 62, are in custody for January 2022 indictments on numerous charges for participating in a conspiracy to defraud mortgage lenders, banks, the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Campos and Best originally indicated that they would surrender but instead allegedly fled authorities. Crabtree was among other co-conspirators who were indicted at a later date; he was released on bond and also took flight.

According to the charges, Campos and Best used the company names of KMB Credit, KMD Capital, Jeff Funding and others to recruit clients for credit repair. These “repairs” were made by filing false identity theft reports with the FTC to inflate the clients’ credit scores. Crabtree, per the charges, was a credit repair client who then recruited others, including his family members, and conspired to commit wire fraud.

After that, Campos, Best and the others acquired mortgages, consumer loans and credit cards for their themselves and clients via false statements and fake documents. Furthermore, Campos, a former mortgage broker also known as Jill Turner, worked with another co-conspirator, 68-year-old former Realtor Elvina Buckley, to allegedly obtain rental properties under their clients’ names and profit from rental income. Per the Justice Department, this fraudulent real estate portfolio was “worth millions of dollars.”

If convicted, the participants in the scheme face up to 30 years in federal prison, as well as a fine of up to $1 million.