A Riverwoods man has been ordered to pay more than $1.4 million in damages for using fraudulent vehicle titles to obtain loans from a Chicago lending company.
A Cook County Circuit Court judge issued the ruling late last month against Yale Schiff of Riverwoods, former owner of the now defunct Synergy Funding Corp.
Chicago attorney Randall Gold had claimed in a civil lawsuit that Schiff used almost 40 phony automobile titles to obtain business loans from his client, Chicago Auto Loans, LLC.
“We’re very proud of the results of our ongoing efforts to have this matter properly adjudicated for our client,” Gold said Wednesday.
In her order, Judge Brigid Mary McGrath awarded Chicago Auto Loans, LLC compensatory damages for fraud of over $480,000, and punitive damages of over $960,000.
During the trial, which McGrath noted in her ruling that Schiff did not attend although he was ordered to do so, Schiff was found to have created not less than 39 phony automobile titles to secure more than $175,000 in loans. He then refused to repay the principal and interest on the loans, Gold said.
“Schiff’s representation to the plaintiff that Schiff and his company, SFC, had obtained security interests in valid and authentic Illinois auto titles as collateral from respective borrowers constituted material false statements of fact,” McGrath wrote in her March 22 ruling.
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Gold said Synergy Funding Corp. was a Chicago-based business when litigation began in 2012.
Attempts to reach Schiff for comment were unsuccessful.
In a separate ruling, U.S. Bankruptcy Court has denied a petition for voluntary bankruptcy filed by Schiff and initiated a one-year ban on his ability to file for bankruptcy.
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