A 47-year-old real estate investor from Orange, New Jersey, has been sentenced to time already served — totaling 20 months — for his involvement in a mortgage fraud conspiracy,
Cabral Simpson had pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
According to the release, Simpson and his co-conspirators fabricated bank statements and employee verification records for property buyers. They transferred funds into buyers’ bank accounts to cover property deposits, while submitting fraudulent mortgage loan applications, supporting documents, and closing documents.
The fraudulent activity led lenders to issue over $1 million in loans, resulting in defaults and causing more than $1 million in losses to both the lenders and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In addition to the time already served, Judge Neals sentenced Simpson to two years of supervised release and ordered him to pay $1.3 million restitution.
Simpson isn’t the only industry-related person to have a brush with the New Jersey District of the U.S. Department of Justice in recent weeks.
Contractor Joel Konopka, 45, of Elizabeth, New Jersey, was charged last month with four counts of corporate tax evasion, two counts of filing false corporate tax returns, and two counts of failing to file corporate tax returns, according to a U.S. Department of Justice.
Konopka was the owner and sole shareholder of Konopka Construction, a construction and contracting company in northern New Jersey.
According to court documents, Konopka allegedly filed inaccurate corporate tax returns for his company during that period, despite earning over $3.3 million in business income between 2014 and 2017, including more than $1 million in 2016.
Konopka underreported this income. Instead, he filed corporate tax returns for 2014 and 2015 that reported no income for his company, and he failed to file any corporate tax returns for 2016 and 2017. Additionally, Konopka is accused of not making any payments to the IRS for corporate taxes during these years.