The last of three Connecticut men convicted in a mortgage-fraud scheme involving a Morris lakefront home will spend 2 ½ years in prison, prosecutors say.
Ex-mortgage broker Ryan Geddes, 44, of Litchfield also was sentenced Wednesday in New Haven federal court to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $703,698.70 in restitution, the Connecticut U.S. Attorney’s office said.
Geddes’ two co-defendants were previously convicted and sentenced. Last September, Jason Calabrese of Watertown, another former mortgage broker, was sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to repay $400,000. In December 2014, Thomas Provenzano, who was convicted of being a “straw borrower’’ in the scam, was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
According to investigators and court records, in November 2005 Calabrese’s co-conspirator, Provenzano, obtained a $923,200 loan to buy a $1.1 million lakefront home on Palmer Road in Morris.
Despite Provenzano’s limited income, Calabrese – using inflated financial and employment information – arranged for him to get the loan to buy the house from an entity controlled by a second co-conspirator, prosecutors said. Calabrese’s company collected a $32,312 broker’s fee on the loan.
A year later, Provenzano refinanced the home, again using falsified information about his job and income, investigators said. This time at closing, Calabrese drew an $18,720 broker’s fee.
Eventually, all mortgage payments on the loan stopped, landing the lakefront house in foreclosure, authorities said.
