Pennsylvania Cash Back Mortgage Fraud Scammer Gets 14 Years In Federal Pen

The Lancaster Intelligencer Journal reports:

• Mickey Allen Weicksel, a former Lancaster real estate investor who obtained about $4 million in kickbacks through a real estate scam, was sentenced Tuesday to 14 years in prison. Federal District Judge Barclay Surrick in Philadelphia also sentenced Weicksel, 40, to serve five years probation after his release from prison and ordered him to pay $750,324 in restitution. Weicksel was convicted in March 2006 of 14 counts of wire fraud, three counts of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Weicksel will join his former business partner, Barrylee Paul Beers, in federal prison. Beers, who previously pleaded guilty to wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, is serving a four-year prison term.

The scam involved (1) submitting false information to lenders to fraudulently obtain mortgage loans, (2) receiving "cash back" at closing from the sellers whose property was being purchased, and (3) use of a bogus repair company used to falsely create or inflate repair costs on the purchased properties when in fact no significant work had ever been done, according to prosecutors. The money being paid for the purported repair costs came out of the mortgage loan proceeds and were, in effect, the "kickbacks" paid to the scammers.

Beers and Weicksel purchased more than 100 properties in the Lancaster area. For more, see Man gets prison for house scam.