Bid Rigging Conspiracy At Real Estate Tax Lien Auction Lands Participant One Year Prison Stay; Actions Led To Inflated Costs For Financially Distressed Homeowners To Redeem Their Tax-Delinquent Homes

From the U.S. Department of Justice (Washington, D.C.):

• A former bidder for a Pennsylvania tax liens investment company was sentenced to serve a prison term of 12 months and one day and pay a $25,000 criminal fine for conspiring to rig bids at New Jersey tax lien auctions, the Department of Justice announced today.
  
  James Jeffers Jr., of Mount Holly, New Jersey, was sentenced [] by U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton of the District of New Jersey. Jeffers was convicted by a jury on Oct. 2, 2015 after a multi-week criminal trial. The jury found Jeffers guilty of violating Section One of the Sherman Act by conspiring to allocate and rig bids at municipal tax lien auctions that were held in the state of New Jersey from at least 1998 until at least February 2009.
  
  Jeffers’s conviction resulted from his conduct as a bidder for Crusader Servicing Corp., which pleaded guilty in September 2012 to participating in the same conspiracy. Jeffers also bid for Crusader’s successor company during the conspiratorial period.
  
  Jeffers participated with others in the conspiracy not to bid against one another at municipal tax lien auctions. Since the conspiracy permitted the conspirators to purchase tax liens with limited competition, each conspirator was able to obtain liens which earned a higher interest rate. Property owners were therefore made to pay higher interest on their tax debts than they would have paid had their liens been purchased in open and honest competition, the department said.

Source: Judge Orders New Jersey Investor to Serve a Year in Prison for Bid Rigging at Tax Lien Auctions (Thirteen Individuals and Three Companies Have Been Convicted or Pleaded Guilty in the Investigation to Date).