A former D.C. housing official pleaded guilty Thursday in a scheme to invent a fake federal housing program for veterans in order to defraud mortgage lenders of $15 million.
Richard Cunningham, 55, pleaded guilty to making false statements to a mortgage lending business. In a plea agreement filed this week, the private developer who’d formerly worked at the District of Columbia Housing Authority admitted to lying to lenders about properties he controls in DC.
He could face up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine for the scheme. An attorney representing Cunningham didn’t respond to a request for comment. Information from the plea agreement shows the proceeds he took “have been dissipated by him and cannot be located.”
He’ll be sentenced Dec. 4, according to information from DC District Attorney Jeanine Pirro.
“Richard Cunningham didn’t just defraud lenders, he fabricated federal voucher documents, forged signatures, and invented a veterans housing program that never existed, all to line his own pockets,” Pirro said in a statement. “Exploiting the name and sacrifice of American veterans to commit fraud is particularly offensive, and my office will pursue those abuses with the full weight of federal law.”
Phony ‘Veterans Assistance Payments’ program
Cunningham left his position at the DC Housing Authority in 1999 and began working as a real estate developer. He later founded a company, Cunningham Real Estate Management LLC. That company, according to court documents, poisoned itself as a developer aiming to house veterans in the nation’s capital.
According to court documents, Cunningham began the scheme in August 2020, and he submitted falsified documents involving properties he owned around the District. Through 2024, he attempted to obtain $14.9 million from two lenders, and ended up getting about $12.1 million.
He applied for six secondary renovation loans from a Virginia mortgage company, falsifying mortgage statements for the primary loans on those property and understating the balances owed. This made his equity appear greater than it was, and allowed him to secure $7.4 million, allegedly for renovations.
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Then, Cunningham obtained renovation financing from another mortgage company in Oregon, fabricating lease documents claiming to be from a “Veterans Assistance Payments” program from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The forged documents purported to show federally backed rental income flowing to the property that secured the loan, but in reality, there is no such thing as the “Veterans Assistance Payments” program, prosecutors say.
Instead, these were altered documents from HUD’s Housing Choice Voucher program. Using forged entries and signatures, as well as rent rolls falsely showing tenants had HUD vouchers, he obtained $4.7 million from that lender.
The FBI Washington Field Office and HUD’s Office of Inspector General helped with the investigation, Pirro’s office said. Pirro cited an increased focus on fraud enforcement instigated by the Trump administration. That effort has led to increased pursuit of mortgage fraud and other crimes.
Tristan Navera is a senior reporter on housing policy, covering trends and solutions in the housing market from Washington, DC. He was previously a senior reporter at Bloomberg Law, and before that covered real estate for the Washington Business Journal. Earlier in his career, he spent a decade reporting on business and real estate in Dayton and Columbus, OH. A Cincinnati native, he holds a journalism degree from Ohio University.
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Tristan Navera