EX-CONVICT ACCUSED OF LOAN FRAUD MORTGAGE BUSINESS SCAM, AUTHORITIES SAY.

Byline: KAREN MAESHIRO

Staff Writer

LANCASTER -- A Lancaster woman convicted of welfare fraud and then sent to prison for three years for violating her probation is charged in a new case alleging a $2.3 million mortgage scam.

Alvina Rankins, also known as Alvina Mitchell, is charged with 12 felony counts of grand theft in connection with a mortgage business she ran out of a Palmdale office called Alvon Mortgage Loans Investment Network, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department detectives said.

"She was charged with submitting fraudulent loan applications in the amount of $2.3 million," Detective Dennis Watters said. "She was running a mortgage-broker business and altering records."

Rankins, 42, was arrested at her west Lancaster home Feb. 9 after getting out of prison on parole in December. She was being held in lieu of more than $2.3 million bail.

Rankins is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom.

In 2002, she was given a suspended three-year prison sentence and sentenced to a year in jail for welfare fraud. As part of her probation, she was ordered to pay $30,000 in restitution.

In February 2006, a judge found that Rankins had violated her probation and sentenced her to the three years in prison after she had bought a house valued at more than $700,000, spent $44,800 on a pool and bought a sport utility vehicle for herself and a motorcycle for her boyfriend while paying only $2,500 toward her court-ordered $30,000 restitution.

While on probation, Rankins had also tried to get free school lunches for her three children, prosecutors said.

During a search before her November 2005 arrest on suspicion of violating her probation, paperwork was found prompting detectives to initiate an investigation into possible real-estate fraud.

"We found some documents that looked suspicious," Watters said. The new charges relate to incidents that occurred mostly in 2005, Watters said.

In the prior case, Rankins was charged with illegally receiving welfare and Medi-Cal benefits while running a day-care center in her home under a Los Angeles County contract, despite having a prior criminal record.

She pleaded no contest in March 2001 to one count of welfare fraud.

Rankins, who was convicted of arson in 1988, auto theft in 1992 and receiving stolen property in 1995, lost her child-care license in November 1999.

She was accused of fraudulently receiving the Medi-Cal benefits from November 1995 to February 1999.

karen.maeshiro(at)dailynews.com

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