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Mohammed N. Islam, also known as “Tanveer,” was sentenced Tuesday by Chief U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall in New Haven. After the prison term, he will serve three years of supervised release.
Islam was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $5,141,817.
According to court documents and statements made in court, from 2006 to 2013, Islam took part in a mortgage fraud conspiracy that involved buying numerous single and multi-family properties, primarily in Bridgeport, Norwalk and Stamford. During the scheme, Islam and his co-conspirators provided materially false information to mortgage lenders, including false verifications of mortgage applicants’ income, false verifications of down payments for real estate transactions and false HUD-1 Forms.
Islam recruited and directed the actions of several “straw buyers,” or individuals who fraudulently applied for and obtained mortgage loans but did not have an actual financial investment or stake in the mortgage loan transactions. In fact, Islam was the intended owner of the property, managed the property and collected all of the rents from the property. Many of these properties ended up in foreclosure, or in short sale transactions.
Through this scheme, lenders suffered losses of more than $8 million.
On March 12, 2014, Islam pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud.
This investigation was conducted by the FBI and the Federal Housing Finance Agency – Office of Inspector General. The criminal case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Heather Cherry and Avi Perry, and the parallel civil forfeiture cases were handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie G. Turbert.
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