FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, September 18, 2023

Defendant Claimed Financial Hardship While Earning Approximately $240,000 in Income

            WASHINGTON – Maron Moss, Jr., 49, of Miami, Florida, pleaded guilty today in Superior Court to one count of first-degree fraud for a scheme in which he stole more than $31,920 from the District of Columbia’s HomeSaver program, a foreclosure prevention program administered by the D.C. Housing Finance Agency and funded by the U.S. Department of Treasury. U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves, Principal Deputy Inspector General Melissa Bruce, of the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), and Inspector General for the District of Columbia Daniel W. Lucas made the announcement.

            According to the government’s evidence, Moss, a former DC resident, applied for mortgage assistance for his Washington, D.C. home in 2018, and then submitted recertifications for continued program eligibility on six separate occasions between 2018 and 2019.  Moss represented that he was suffering from financial hardship, was unemployed, and that his only source of income was unemployment benefits. Based on these representations, the D.C. Housing Finance Agency made more than $31,920 in monthly mortgage payments directly to Moss’s mortgage service companies. But Moss was, in fact, employed when he applied for the program, as well as during the entire period that he recertified his program eligibility, earning approximately $239,743 in income from at least five different employers during the relevant 20-month period.

            The Honorable Heidi Pasichow accepted Moss’s guilty plea and scheduled sentencing for December 5, 2023. As part of the plea agreement, Moss agreed to pay full restitution.

            In announcing the guilty plea, U.S. Attorney Graves, Principal Deputy Inspector General Bruce, and Inspector General Lucas commended the work of those who investigated the case from SIGTARP and the Office of Inspector General.  They also acknowledged the efforts of Assistant U.S. Attorneys Benjamin D. Bleiberg and Brian P. Kelly who investigated and prosecuted the case.