US files to seize ex-Baltimore prosecutor’s condo

BALTIMORE — Federal prosecutors filed notice Friday that they will ask to seize former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s Florida vacation condo on the same day as her sentencing on perjury and mortgage fraud charges.

The government indicated early on in the case that it would seek forfeiture. Friday’s filing formalizes prosecutors’ request and sets up the possibility of a legal fight over the condo at Mosby’s May 23 sentencing.

The government intends to sell the condo, according to the motion, which Mosby bought in February 2021 for $476,000. If there are profits from the sale, Mosby would get back her $47,600 down payment, prosecutors wrote.

The condominium known as “The Tree House” sits along Florida’s Gulf Coast in Longboat Key. It is one of two Florida vacation properties that Mosby bought during the coronavirus pandemic using money withdrawn from her city retirement account.

Mosby used that money, about $80,000, to put down payments on the two properties. Prosecutors said she lied about suffering a pandemic-related financial setback in order to make the early withdrawals under the CARES Act, federal legislation that offered emergency economic relief during the health crisis.

A federal jury agreed, convicting Mosby of two counts of perjury in November. At her second trial in January, the government alleged that Mosby lied repeatedly when she applied for mortgages on the two properties, which were worth almost $1 million combined.

Jurors convicted Mosby of one count of mortgage fraud at that trial, finding that Mosby submitted a false gift letter claiming that her then-husband, Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby, would send her $5,000 to close on the Longboat Key Condo. In fact, Mosby sent her husband the money herself before he wired it to an escrow agent.

Mosby faces up to 40 years in prison at her sentencing, though maximum sentences are rare. She has taken the unusual step of publicly asking for a presidential pardon ahead of her sentencing.

U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby has scheduled a forfeiture hearing to take place on the same day as Mosby’s sentencing in Greenbelt.

In cases involving forfeiture, it’s not unusual for the defense and prosecution to come to an agreement, said Steven Levin, a former federal prosecutor who is not involved in Mosby’s case. It’s possible that Mosby could agree to pay a judgment instead.

“This way, to the extent she wants to, Mosby can conceivably hold on to the property,” Levin said. “And the government doesn’t have to deal with the headache of seizing the property, maintaining it and preparing it for resale, all of which carry significant costs.”

Mosby previously sold the other Florida vacation property, an eight-bedroom house in Kissimmee, near Disney World, for $696,000. She paid $545,000 for the home in September 2020.

Prosecutors would not have been able to seize that property anyway, Levin said, because Mosby was not convicted of the count of mortgage fraud related to that home.

The condo, however, is forfeitable “in its entirety,” prosecutors wrote, because Mosby could not have bought it without committing mortgage fraud.