Wheaton title company owners stole more than $500,000

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Patricia Johnson (left) and Pamela Williams have pleaded guilty to stealing more than $500,000 through a home mortgage scheme.

Updated: April 4, 2011 6:57PM

Two owners of a Wheaton title company stole more than $500,000 from their customers — including a disabled Vietnam War veteran — and then used the money to pay credit card bills, buy appliances and cover business expenses.

Meanwhile, the customers they fleeced in the home refinancing scheme often were left struggling with two mortgages, DuPage County prosecutors said.

The owners of PLM Title Company, Pamela Williams and Patricia Johnson, are facing minimum 8-year prison terms after pleading guilty Monday to felony theft charges stemming from the scam, prosecutors said.

The women ripped off customers who turned to their company when refinancing or buying a home, authorities said.

When a customer closed on a home purchase or refinanced a mortgage, the new mortgage holder would wire money into a PLM escrow account, prosecutors said as they outlined the scam.

Instead of using the money to pay off the customer’s former mortgage holder, Williams and Johnson would keep the cash for personal expenses or business costs, prosecutors said.

“For six months, Pamela Williams and Patricia Johnson were living the good life on someone else’s dime,” DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said in a statement. “They left their victims holding the bag for two mortgages while they padded their own bank accounts.”

Williams, 58, of Darien, and Johnson, 57, of Naperville, initially were charged last year with stealing from more than two dozen clients between November 2007 and April 2008, with authorities estimating they may have taken as much as $6 million.

In a plea bargain with prosecutors reached Monday as their trial was scheduled to begin, they pleaded guilty to fleecing 10 clients out of more than $500,000.

One customer who lost money was a Vietnam veteran who received $50,000 from the Veterans Administration to make his home wheelchair accessible. He forwarded nearly $7,000 of that amount to PLM to go towards his mortgage — but Johnson and Williams stole that money, prosecutors said.