Financier to Pay $38 Million, Serve 30 Years for Mortgage Fraud

A former Florida-based mortgage company chairman convicted of fraud must serve 30 years in prison and pay $38.5 million after he failed to convince the Fourth Circuit Wednesday that his sentence should be overturned because of a change in the law about obtaining counsel.

Federal prosecutors accused Lee Farkas and his Ocala-based company of papering over $100 million in funding deficits and selling over $500 million in sham mortgages in its 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program.

They also allegedly inflated the value of their collateral by more than $1.5 billion, and sought to defraud the government out of $553 million. ...