First, Darin McAllister preached the Gospel in Los Angeles. Then he picked up a badge and gun as a Los Angeles police officer.. From there, says the Los Angeles Times, he moved to the FBI, serving as an undercover agent. His life was “my American dream.” Now McAllister is in federal prison serving a 4-year sentence for mortgage fraud. His life today, he says, is “my American nightmare.”
His path from Bible to badge to prison bars is in some part a result of the three-year national housing crisis. When real estate loans went bad, he came under scrutiny from his own employer, the FBI, for lying about his income. He had started purchasing duplexes, painting and dry-walling, and renting them out. The market buckled, and McAllister lost his tenants. He fell behind in payments. The loans were called in and the banks foreclosed. Examiners noted that in the lending documents McAllister had greatly inflated his income — by hundreds of thousands of dollars.