Baltimore’s Ex-Top Prosecutor Convicted of Mortgage Fraud in Split Verdict

A federal jury on Tuesday convicted Marilyn Mosby, once Baltimore’s top prosecutor, on one count of felony mortgage fraud for lying on an application to purchase a vacation home in Longboat Key, Florida in 2021.

The jury returned a split verdict, meaning that Mosby, 44, was also acquitted of a second charge of fraud related to the purchase of a home in Kissimmee, Florida.

Mosby faces up to 30 years behind bars. She was separately convicted of two counts of perjury in another case last November after a jury found she had lied about hardships she’d suffered during the pandemic to access retirement funds. She is appealing the perjury verdict, and is expected to appeal the fraud decision.

Sentencing has not been scheduled in either case.

As the verdicts were read out after six hours of deliberation on Tuesday, Mosby lowered her head and sobbed aloud, The Baltimore Sun reported. As she left the courthouse, a crowd chanted, “We love Marilyn!”

“We can only guess, in terms of what went on in that jury room,” Andrew Alperson, an attorney for Mosby, told CBS Baltimore. “It’s not a good day. It’s a sad day for Marilyn Mosby.”

Serving two terms as state’s attorney for Baltimore, Mosby was propelled into the national spotlight for pursuing criminal charges against six police officers after Freddie Gray’s 2015 death in custody. The prosecutions were all unsuccessful, and she lost re-election in 2022 after being indicted.

Federal prosecutors said that the $90,000 Mosby fraudulently withdrew from the retirement account was used for down payments on the two homes—a beachfront condominium in Longboat Key and an eight-bedroom home minutes from Disney World in Kissimmee. But much of the trial, which began in mid-January, hinged on the fact that Mosby failed to disclose on her mortgage applications that she and her ex-husband, Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby, owed $69,000 in unpaid federal taxes.

Crucially, Mosby also lied about receiving a $5,000 gift from Nick that was to be applied to the purchase of the property, according to the Department of Justice. In reality, Mosby had transferred the sum to him, only for him to return it to her—all for the purposes of securing a lower interest rate, according to prosecutors.

Mosby testified that she didn’t intentionally lie on the mortgage applications, professing her inexperience in buying property, according to the Associated Press. “Ms. Mosby is not an accountant. She’s not a tax lawyer,” one of her attorneys argued, according to The Washington Post. “Even a lawyer, even a state’s attorney, can make mistakes by not reading documents, or not reading them closely enough.”

Prosecutors didn’t buy that argument. “She was the top prosecutor in the city of Baltimore and oversaw hundreds of lawyers,” said an assistant U.S. attorney, Aaron Zelinsky. “You know what prosecutors know a lot about? Fraud. Mortgage fraud.”

U.S. Attorney Erek Barron, whose office brought the charges against Mosby, said in a statement, “We humbly respect the court’s considered rulings, opposing counsels’ zealous advocacy, and the wisdom of both jury verdicts in this case and we remain focused on our mission to uphold the rule of law.”

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