Thomas Komasa, 48, and his wife Heidi Komasa, 40, former Vermont residents, who now live in Saugerties, New York, were sentenced in United States District Court in Burlington, Vermont, following their mortgage fraud convictions in the summer of 2012.
Francis Santore, a/k/a Frank Martin, 53, Northfield, New Jersey, a former employee in the New Jersey offices of the Vacation Ownership Group LLC admitted that he conspired to defraud owners of timeshare properties by offering phony consulting services and debt elimination while also illegally collecting unemployment benefits.
John Lebron, 33, Tampa, Florida, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Elizabeth A. Kovachevich sentenced to 26 years in federal prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud affecting a financial institution, and making false statements to a financial institution.
Vincent J. Garcia, 61, Albuquerque, New Mexico, a real estate developer, was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison followed by five years of supervised release for his bank fraud conviction. Garcia also was ordered to pay $722,543.76 in restitution to the banks that were the victims of his criminal conduct.
Joseph Robert Guernsey, 39, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, was sentenced by United States District Judge R. Bryan Harwell to 21 months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $141,206.39 for bank fraud, a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1344.
Brandon Barber, 37, New York, and his four co-defendants, appeared in United States District Court for arraignment on various charges of bank fraud, bankruptcy fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering stemming from schemes to defraud involving several Northwest Arkansas real estate transactions and Barber’s bankruptcy case.
Mohammed Rezaian, Novato, California, a real estate investor, has agreed to plead guilty for his role in conspiracies to rig bids and commit mail fraud at public real estate foreclosure auctions in Northern California.
Michael A. Zimmerman, 56, Dover, Delaware, is the subject of new charges when a federal grand jury released a superseding indictment with additional fraud and money-laundering offenses.
A 34-count indictment was unsealed charging five people with various crimes stemming from their participation in a mortgage fraud scheme between May 2004 and February 2009 that involved fraudulent documents, inflated purchase prices on loan documents for more than 100 Philadelphia properties and resulted in more than $20 million in fraudulent loan proceeds.
Mitchell Cohen, the owner of the now defunct Buy-A-Home real estate brokerage business, was sentenced in Manhattan, New York, federal court to 70 months in prison for participating in a multi-million dollar mortgage fraud scheme and for committing perjury.