A federal jury on Tuesday convicted the former top prosecutor in Baltimore, Marilyn Mosby, of lying to a mortgage lender in 2021 as she purchased a vacation property in Florida that she called her “private oasis.”
U.S. authorities in Maryland alleged that Mosby, 44, lied to mortgage lenders while purchasing two Florida vacation homes — one in Kissimmee, just minutes from Disney World, and a beach condominium in Longboat Key. After deliberating for one day, the jury acquitted Mosby of fraud related to the first property but convicted her of making a false statement to a mortgage lender in 2021 to acquire the second one. Mosby sobbed as the verdicts were read, the Washington Post reports. A former Baltimore state’s attorney who unsuccessfully prosecuted six of the city’s police officers in the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, Mosby was convicted of perjury in a separate trial in November over her moves to withdraw $90,000 from retirement funds, which she used as down payments for the Florida homes. In that case, prosecutors argued that Mosby falsely claimed she was experiencing financial hardships during the coronavirus pandemic to access the money through a Cares Act program.
Mosby lost her bid for reelection in a 2022 primary, and she now faces the prospect of decades in prison when she is sentenced later this year in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt. She is appealing the perjury convictions.
On mortgage documents in 2020 and 2021, federal prosecutors said, Mosby failed to disclose that she had unpaid federal taxes and that the IRS had placed a $45,000 lien against all properties owned by her and her husband, Nick Mosby (D), the president of the Baltimore City Council. Mosby testified she was aware of the unpaid taxes when she submitted the first loan application in July 2020 but thought her husband was making timely payments on an installment plan with the IRS. Mosby’s public defenders argued that she was a home-buying “novice” who was misled by her husband and mortgage broker. On the witness stand, Nick Mosby told the jury he spent years hiding the couple’s tax debts from Marilyn Mosby, who had threatened to leave him unless he sorted out his finances.