Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - Updated 2 weeks ago
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Award-winning court and crime reporter Laurel J. Sweet has been featured in the ABC miniseries "Boston 24/7" and the 9-11 documentary motion picture "Looking For My Brother."
A wonky credit score undercut Salvatore F. DiMasi’s 2006 attempt to refinance the $500,000 Needham home his wife inherited from her parents, a former loan officer who was asked to help ease the ex-House speaker’s cash-flow problems testified yesterday.
“We could not come up with a loan scenario that was suitable,” Michael Codair, a former sales manager for Patriot Funding, said at the Democrat’s corruption trial in Boston’s U.S. District Court.
DiMasi is defending against charges he took $65,000 to steer a Canadian software company, Cognos, state contracts that earned its local sales rep — and his close friend — Joseph P. Lally Jr. nearly $4 million in commissions. Federal prosecutors have attributed DiMasi’s money woes to a lavish lifestyle that rang up $50,000 in credit card debt alone.
Codair, 44, of North Andover said he could not recall what DiMasi’s credit score was or how large a loan he hoped to secure — even after assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Fuller showed him a related e-mail to refresh his memory. Its contents were not shared with the jury.
In what never progressed beyond an informal inquiry, Codair said he dealt with DiMasi’s accountant and co-defendant, Richard Vitale, and Vitale’s employee Barbara Martin, who is expected to questioned about why DiMasi was deemed a poor credit risk.
Codair said when he suggested DiMasi add his bride Debbie, 46, to an application as a co-borrower, all communication with Vitale and Martin stopped.
“There was a pause, like (Vitale) understood, and we were just awaiting feedback on how they wanted to proceed,” Codair said. “That was the last information I had on that.”
Soon afterward, Vitale extended DiMasi a $250,000 third mortgage on his North End condo. Prosecutors have said that as part of a bid-rigging scheme, DiMasi helped orchestrate a sham tax-consulting contract between Vitale and Cognos that paid Vitale $600,000, but never called on him to do a day’s work. For the money reviews >> Mortgage Refinance Online Reviews .
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