Convicted Wall Street Securities Fraudster, Wife Get Bagged In Florida Straw Buyer, Mortgage Fraud Scam Involving 37 Homes, $27M+ In Loans

In Cape Coral, Florida, the Naples Daily News reports:

• A decade ago in New York, where Wall Street held the promise of riches, Ronald Luczak started selling securities. He ended up in jail instead. [...] By the summer of 2005, he was on supervised release and settled with his family in Southwest Florida. This time the promised riches were in real estate.

• With his wife, Lisa Luczak, who opened Cape Coral Equity and Development Group that fall, real estate ended up being his trade. But he continued his previous profession, too.
  Fraud allegations came the following year, and [last] Wednesday, he and his wife both pleaded guilty in federal court to fraud counts related to a mortgage fraud scheme in Cape Coral that involved at least 37 properties and more than $27 million in home loans.(1)

• In his plea agreement, Ronald Luczak admitted to contracting to buy homes at one price, then having the home appraised for a higher amount — often bumping the price up by about $150,000 — and pocketing much of the difference as an “assignment fee.” In a year and a half, his wife’s company received $5.8 million in those fees.

For more, see Couple may face prison time in Southwest Florida real estate scam.

(1) According to the story, Sandra Mainardi, a New Jersey resident who helped process loan applications with the Luczaks for 100 percent financing of inflated sales prices, pleaded guilty last month to one count of wire fraud; and Alex Nelson Gonzalo, a former Cape Coral police officer and real estate agent, pleaded guilty earlier this year to accessing an FBI database without authorization.