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A Brooklyn court clerk was among nine indicted after a mortgage fraud investigation uncovered a $1.4 million operation that allegedly robbed a 74-year-old Queens widow of her Jamaica home.

The culprits, arraigned on Tuesday, allegedly used stolen identities and forged documents to stage phony mortgage deals with banks, prosecutors said. The group was charged with various counts of fraud, forgery and property and identity theft.

John D’Emic, 59, appointed chief deputy county clerk in January, was accused of facilitating the transactions by providing false legal documents and acted as an attorney at the fraudulent closings.

“This complicated and devious scheme allegedly involved defendants who were so greedy that they bought and sold three properties – totaling more than $1.4 million in fraudulent transactions – in just over eight days. Their alleged actions left a Jamaica woman – whose house was owned free and clear – facing foreclosure and a New Jersey woman – whose identity was stolen – fighting off banks seeking payment of mortgages fraudulently taken out in her name,” Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said.

A complaint filed by one of the victims last November spurred the group’s investigation. Dorothy Thomas, 74, told investigators her home had been sold without her knowledge when she received a notice of foreclosure two months after the phony sale. The notice was addressed to “Tolessi Enyonam” and contained details about the recent purchase of her home and its pending foreclosure.

Further investigation revealed that the group had allegedly recruited someone to pose at the closing as Thomas’ deceased husband, Eugene Thomas – whose name the house remained under after his death in 1986. The house was allegedly sold to a straw buyer, someone aware of and paid off in the scheme to defraud the bank, with a $490,500 mortgage issued by Wells Fargo.

The investigation later linked the group to fraudulent mortgages on two other houses located in Richmond Hill and Brooklyn. All of the accused were charged with conspiring to defraud lending banks in the scheme that eventually netted them mortgage proceeds of more than $1.4 million. In the other two cases, prosecutors said the homes were sold by legitimate owners, but were purchased by straw buyers using two stolen identities – a resident alien who had since left the United States and a New Jersey woman – whose names and personal information were used to obtain the large mortgages.

All of the deeds and mortgages were allegedly forged and filed with the city registry. All of the mortgages are currently in default.

Eight of the nine people named in the indictment have been arrested. Gulam “Zack” Chowdhury, 22, of Lawrence, remains at large.

The number of suspected mortgage fraud cases has increased dramatically throughout the City, especially in Queens. Reported federal cases increased from 504 in 2006 to 1,096 in 2007, according to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a division of the U.S. Treasury Department.