Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby is set to resume his testimony Monday morning in the mortgage fraud trial of his ex-wife, former city State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby.
When the trial resumes, prosecutors are expected to continue peppering Nick Mosby with pointed questions.
The council president, a Democrat, took the witness stand Thursday and spent much of the day answering questions from Mosby’s defense lawyers.
He gave an emotional account of the couple’s story, from the time they fell in love as college students in Alabama to their relationship unraveling as each achieved political prominence.
Nick Mosby also took the blame for the couple’s once sizable federal tax delinquency, saying he alone handled their taxes and that he wasn’t transparent with his wife as the debt accumulated.
His testimony goes to the heart of Marilyn Mosby’s defense against two counts of mortgage fraud. She is accused of making seven false statements across two loan applications for a pair of properties she purchased in Florida: an eight-bedroom house near Disney World and a condo on the Gulf Coast.
Prosecutors must convince the jury that Mosby’s false statements were intentional and intended to influence mortgage lenders. Though her indictment lists seven false statements, prosecutors must only prove one false statement per mortgage to secure a conviction.
Attorneys for Mosby, 44, say she did not knowingly lie.
Mosby did not disclose the couple’s unpaid taxes, which grew to $69,000 with penalties and interest, on either mortgage application.
Underwriters for the mortgage lenders testified that they relied on Mosby’s truthfulness on the applications in determining whether to issue the loans. Had she disclosed the liability, they said in court, they may not have lent her money.
Nick Mosby said he didn’t tell his wife about the debt originally and that when she found out about it, he said he was taking care of it. But he didn’t.
“I lied to her throughout the whole time,” he testified.
Marilyn Mosby closed on the house near Orlando in September 2020 and the condo in Longboat Key in February 2021.
Prosecutors said her lies on mortgages for both applications didn’t end with the unpaid taxes.
Nick Mosby plays a role in at least one more of his ex-wife’s alleged false statements.
Short of about $5,000 on closing costs for the condo, but with her mortgage application already in front of the lender, Marilyn Mosby needed to figure out a way to come up with cash quickly — or at least make it look like she would have enough by the time the transaction took place.
By that time, the mortgage lender had already locked in an interest rate for Mosby’s mortgage, an underwriter for the lending company testified. If Mosby didn’t close on the property then, the underwriter said, she risked losing the interest rate.
Mosby’s Florida mortgage broker, who facilitated her purchase of both properties, suggested she submit a letter to the lender saying someone would give her money at closing. In the so-called “gift letter,” Mosby wrote that her husband was going to transfer $5,000 to finalize the deal.
But Nick Mosby had only about half of that amount in his bank account.
Jenna Bender, a forensic accountant with the FBI, reviewed the former power couple’s bank records.
When Marilyn Mosby received her biweekly state’s attorney salary after writing the gift letter, she transferred $5,000 to Nick Mosby’s account, Bender testified. Nick Mosby transferred the money from his checking account to his savings account and back again. Then, Bender said, he sent the money back to his wife.
Nick Mosby said he believed he put the money into his savings account so that an automatic payment linked to his checking account wouldn’t draw from those funds, but that he didn’t “really remember” the transaction.
Mosby’s attorneys said Thursday that they have several witnesses coming from out of state to testify as defense witnesses. Through their questions of prosecution witnesses, Mosby’s lawyers signaled that her mortgage broker, Gilbert Bennett, will play a key role in their defense.
This article will be updated.