Guaranty Title owners indicted on conspiracy charges

Click here for SBJ's past coverage of the fallout from the abrupt 2007 closure of Guaranty Title.

The former owners of Nixa-based Guaranty Title Co. were indicted Tuesday by a Springfield grand jury on 19 counts for their alleged participation in a conspiracy to commit bank fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.

The announcement came Wednesday from the office of Matt J. Whitworth, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri.

Rick Burton and Kathy Cyrena Allen, also known as Kathy Stanton, are alleged to have conspired to defraud financial institutions of more than $2.6 million through illegal financial transfers related to stolen escrow payments, according to the indictment.

The indictment also says that Burton and Stanton defrauded mortgage companies and individual customers of escrow money that had been wired to Guaranty Title to pay closing costs on real estate transactions. The company allegedly transferred more than $2 million of these escrow payments into company accounts to pay for daily operations.

The indictment also alleges that the company engaged in a check-kiting scheme when deposits into the company's escrow accounts no longer covered the shortages caused by the transfer of money out of the funds.

Guaranty at one time had at least 10 branch offices in Aurora, Branson, Mount Vernon, Nixa, Ozark, Springfield and Republic. The company abruptly closed its office doors, as SBJ first reported, in June 2007, at about the same time a state investigation into the company began.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Randall D. Eggert and was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation division and the Missouri Department of Insurance, Financial Institutions and Professional Registration.[[In-content Ad]]