Nathan Shane Wolf, 44, Charlotte, North Carolina and John Wayne Perry, Jr., 34, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Purnell Wood, 44, were sentenced on federal racketeering charges in connection with their roles in the Operation Wax House fraud scheme.

Wolf, a licensed real estate agent, was sentenced to seven years in prison followed by three years of supervised release. Wolf was convicted by a jury in October 2013. According to trial evidence, Wolf was a participant in the enterprise’s mortgage fraud operations, accounting for over $13 million in fraudulently-obtained loans, with losses of more than $7 million. Witnesses testified that Wolf arranged for builders of luxury real estate to pretend to sell such real estate at an inflated price – what Wolf called the “gross price” – in order to get an inflated mortgage loans from a bank. In reality, the builders accepted the true, lower, price – what Wolf called the “strike price” – while Wolf arranged for the difference between the inflated price and the true price to be paid from the loan proceeds as kickbacks. Such kickbacks were funneled through sham companies and disguised to look like payments for work actually done on the real estate. Trial evidence established that the work was never done, but instead these kickbacks were payments to the buyers and promoters who helped bring the parties to the fraud together. According to the evidence at trial, the kickbacks generally ranged from approximately $50,000 to almost $600,000. According to the sentencing hearing, Wolf received more than $200,000 in commissions on the fraudulent transactions, which represented the vast majority of his income during the years he was committing fraud. Continue Reading…