Manhattan Real Estate Attorney Gets 51 Months in Prison

A Manhattan real estate attorney was sentenced to 51 months in prison for his role in a $9 million mortgage fraud scheme, ""Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara"":http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/October12/FingerEricSentencingPR.html announced Friday.

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U.S. District Judge Naomi R. Buchwald sentenced Eric Finger, 47, of Mineola, New York, in Manhattan federal court. In addition to his prison sentence, he was also ordered to give up $7.2 million.

Through Finger's scheme, he and his co-conspirators fraudulently obtained more than $9 million in mortgage loans to purchase dozens of residential properties throughout New York City and Long Island, with most of the loans going into default, according to a release.

""Eric Finger's sentence is a fitting conclusion for a man who abused his license to practice law and disgraced the bar by helping to facilitate a multi-million dollar fraud scheme. He has now lost his liberty and will forfeit millions in ill-gotten gains,"" said Bharara.

According to the Indictment and statements made in court proceedings, Finger and his co-conspirators used ""straw buyers"" to fraudulently obtain mortgages from lenders.

Finger was retained to act as the lender's counsel on many of the fraudulent transactions, but instead of representing the lender's interest at closing, he disbursed fraudulently obtained mortgage proceeds to co-conspirators and lied to his clients about the transactions. The identities of those who received the loan proceeds and the amounts received were also misrepresented.

The co-defendants in the case, Jeffrey Larochelle, Denise Parks, Frederick Warren, Joell Barnett, Foriduzzaman Sarder, Sakat Hossain, Mikael Huq, Fritz Bonaventure, Dorian Brown, and Reginald Johnson, pled guilty previously.

Sarder was sentenced to 78 months in prison; Hossain was sentenced to 29 months in prison; Huq was sentenced to 42 months in prison; Parks was sentenced to time served; Warren was sentenced to 51 months in prison; Bonaventure was sentenced to three months in prison; Brown was sentenced to four months in prison; and Johnson was sentenced to 51 months in prison. Larochelle and Barnett are still awaiting sentencing.