SOUTHAMPTON - A former Suffolk County legislator is among five suspects arrested Wednesday on grand larceny charges by fraudulently obtaining more than $50 million dollars in mortgages on dozens of Southampton town homes.

In a second scheme, an East Islip man and a Farmingville suspect are charged with attempted mortgage fraud for filing bogus paperwork to attain mortgages for homes in Deer Park, Amityville, Jamaica, Queens and Brooklyn.

District Attorney Thomas Spota said the alleged frauds employed the use of straw purchasers to victimize lenders by filing false loan applications that claimed the homebuyers were employed by various corporations owned or controlled by the scheme’s participants. Another scheme, alleged to have been used to secure money, Spota said, involved “mortgage stacking”; the creation of bogus title reports that concealed outstanding mortgages on properties and showed the homes to be owned “free and clear” and unencumbered by existing liens.  

Arraigned in Southampton Justice Court on three counts of first degree grand larceny and first degree scheme to defraud are George O. Guldi of 44 Brushy Neck Lane Westhampton Beach and Ethan E. Ellner, 54 Sagamore Drive Plainview. 

Guldi, 55, an attorney and former Suffolk County Legislator, and Ellner, 49, an attorney and operator of Suburban Abstract, a title company in Stony Brook, allegedly defrauded lending institutions of millions of dollars by using forged documents, false employment and income information on applications, straw buyers, false powers of attorney, deed flipping, and mortgage stacking.

Codefendants Donald MacPherson, 65, and Carrie Coakley of New York and Dustin Dente of Roslyn pled not guilty at their arraignments today in Southampton Justice Court.  MacPherson is charged with two counts of first degree grand larceny and one charge of first degree scheme to defraud.  Macpherson’s wife, Carrie Coakley is charged with first degree scheme to defraud.  Dente, 37, an attorney, is charged with two counts of first degree grand larceny.