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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (104904)	3/19/2005 7:27:02 AM
From: John Carragher	Respond to of 793761

Jury unaware of Commerce loans to Street's niece, White, pals By ERIN EINHORN eeinhorn@phillynews.com Mayor Street's niece received a Commerce Bank mortgage in 2002 for 100 percent of the value of her home despite bad credit and the lowest possible recommendation from a computer loan assessment program, federal prosecutors said yesterday. The loan was approved after somebody wrote "Mayor Street's niece" on the loan documents. The niece, Renee Street-Toppin, is the daughter of former State Sen. Milton Street. She was one of only two people with a credit score lower than 600 who qualified for a 100 percent mortgage from Commerce during the four-month period that prosecutors studied in connection with the City Hall corruption probe, prosecutors said yesterday. The only other such mortgage went to former City Treasurer Corey Kemp, who is now on trial for selling his office to mayoral fund-raiser Ron White and to two Commerce bank executives, among others. Prosecutors say they discovered the Street-Toppin loan recently as they prepared to begin their case against Commerce bank execs Glenn Holck and Stephen Umbrell. That portion of the trial is expected to begin on Monday. The FBI studied the 3,850 residential mortgages given by Commerce from October 2002 to January 2003 to put Kemp's mortgage into context, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Zauzmer told Judge Michael Baylson in a hearing outside the presence of the jury yesterday. Toppin's mortgage, Zauzmer said, was approved on the same day as Kemp's loan. According to real estate records, Commerce gave Toppin two 30-year loans totaling $82,900 for the purchase of an $82,900 house on Anchor Street in Frankford in a sale that closed on Dec. 16, 2002. The jury in the corruption case may never hear about the Street-Toppin loan because Baylson yesterday ruled that prosecutors could not present evidence of loans not directly connected to allegations against Kemp, Holck and Umbrell. Baylson told prosecutors yesterday he would not allow evidence of a $1.3 million mortgage that Commerce gave to White to buy a Florida vacation home, a $20,000 car loan it gave to White's girlfriend, Janice Knight, and a business loan it gave to White associate Algernon Hopkins. Baylson, who has been pressuring prosecutors to speed up the trial as it enters its fifth week on Monday, said he didn't want the case "going down a side street." Mayor Street's office declined to comment on his niece's mortgage. No evidence was presented yesterday detailing how the mortgage came about or whether the mayor was involved in the transaction. Street-Toppin surfaced in the news late last year when police stopped her for driving with a suspended license but did not impound her car as required by law. She could not be reached for comment yesterday. Before the Commerce Bank hearing began yesterday, the jury in the corruption case heard salacious testimony from a woman who had an extra-marital affair with Kemp. The woman, Ingrid McDaniels, testified that she joined Kemp, White, Knight and Knight's two teenage children on a private plane trip to Detroit in April 2003, to attend a party to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of White's affair with Knight. McDaniels said the group enjoyed Cristal champagne on the plane before being transported by limousine to a luxury hotel in downtown Detroit. They attended a cocktail party and then an anniversary party. It was a night that, in a recorded phone conversation played for the jury yesterday, White told his friend La-Van Hawkins, who hosted the party at his Sweet Georgia Brown restaurant in Detroit, he could never do in Philadelphia. In Detroit, White told Hawkins, he could "hook it up" and "bring in a special band... you know, funky band... where you get down." McDaniels also accompanied Kemp on two trips to New York to see concerts. On one such trip, she said, she and Kemp stayed in a large room at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel with marble floors and a big screen TV. "I was wondering why he would pay that much money for a hotel for just a couple of hours," McDaniels said, since the couple would be out late and leave early the next morning. "It seemed like a waste of money to me." When she made these comments to Kemp, she testified, "he said he was hoping that Ron would possibly pay for some of it." Prosecutors yesterday wrapped up their case against Hawkins, who is charged with helping White bribe Kemp and with lying to the grand jury. They played a number of recorded calls between White and Hawkins in which the two discussed fund-raising for Al Sharpton's presidential run and ways Sharpton could help White and Hawkins make money. "You need to handle this m----------- just like you handled John Street," Hawkins told White in one conversation. In another, White said of Street and Sharpton: "They think like politicians, man... they're performers... that's show business."