Thornwood lawyer Anthony P. Vigna has been disbarred on a felony conviction for his role in defrauding nearly 60 homeowners and trying to illegally wipe out $33 million in mortgages.
A panel of five New York Supreme Court appellate justices ruled June 10 that Vigna”™s conviction for conspiracy to commit mail, wire and bank fraud automatically disqualified him as an attorney. The disbarment was made retroactive to March 22, 2019, the day he pleaded guilty.
Vigna admitted “intentional participation in a mortgage scheme using fraudulent documents purporting to discharge mortgages,” the justices ruled. “Through those efforts, he and his co-conspirators fraudulently received funds from distressed mortgagors.”
The mortgage scam operated from 2011 to 2012 by the Pillow Foundation, and later the Terra Foundation, in Valhalla.
The foundations ”“ which were not actually tax-exempt organizations ”“ targeted homeowners who were having trouble paying mortgages. For a fee, Terra claimed it could eliminate their debts.
First, it would conduct an audit. Next, it would send a “qualified written request” to the lender. Then it would file a mortgage discharge document with the local county clerk.
Terra officials signed the documents, posing as authorized representatives of the banks, making it appear as if the mortgages had been satisfied.
Terra charged monthly fees for its services, such as audits that were not done, or on new mortgages it encouraged clients to take out.
Vigna was Terra”™s in-house lawyer.
Rocco Cermele, Jacqueline Graham, Paula Guadagno, Bruce Lewis and John Ruzza were also implicated and indicted in the scheme.
Last year, Vigna pleaded guilty to conspiracy.
His attorney, Michael Shapiro, recommended no prison time. Vigna, he argued in a sentencing letter, had several health problems that exposed him to great risk in jail; he had not benefited financially from the scheme; his conduct did not cause any actual losses; and he had never before been in legal trouble.
“He did not fully comprehend the illegality of the scheme until it was too late,” Shapiro stated. The other conspirators had lied to Vigna, and he had “naively accepted” their explanations for the mortgage discharge papers.
When Vigna discovered that his name had been forged on documents and his notary stamp had been used without his authorization, according to Shapiro, he objected.
Then one day he “came home to find an uninvited visitor, who Mr. Vigna believed had connections to organized crime, sitting on his front steps.” He understood the visit as an intimidation tactic to dissuade him from reporting the forgeries and misuse of his notary stamp.
Vigna received no payments for his legal services, according to Shapiro, but received office space at Terra and the opportunity to learn more about an “administrative process” that enabled homeowners to discharge their mortgages.
But federal prosecutors argued that Vigna helped prepare five of the bogus mortgage discharge papers, including documents for a florist and landscaper who ultimately lost $501,100.
The government traced the scheme to practices of the Sovereign Citizen movement, a loosely organized anti-government faction whose adherents believe they do not have to pay taxes or answer to the courts or law enforcement.
Vigna was not only a lawyer, the government noted. He held a Masters of Business Administration, a CPA license and a mortgage broker license. He had worked as an assistant corporate counsel for the city of Yonkers and as an accountant for Exxon Mobil Corp. He had taught law and accounting as an adjunct professor at five colleges.
“No competent adult who understood what the Terra conspirators were doing ”“ much less a practicing attorney and CPA ”“ could possibly believe that the Terra scheme had a shred of legitimacy to it,” prosecutors David R. Felton, Michael D. Maimin and James McMahon argued in a sentencing memorandum.
What”™s more, they said, “Vigna put on a master class in deception and minimization” when detectives interviewed him.
“Vigna played dumb and pretended not to have anything to do with Terra, despite ”¦ his painstaking explanations of Terra”™s business and the pseudo-legal doctrines purportedly justifying it.”
The prosecutors recommended 46 to 57 months in prison. Last July, U.S. District Judge Nelson S. Roman sentenced Vigna to a year and a day in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered him to pay $250,500 in restitution.
Vigna, 62, is in custody in a Brooklyn halfway house. He is scheduled for release on July 16.
