Ohio Man Sentenced for $36M Mortgage Fraud Scheme

A $36 million mortgage fraud scam run by Jack Coppenger in Ohio and Florida has resulted in a 10-year prison sentence, announced Steven Dettelbach, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio.

Coppenger previously pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy.

In the first count, Coppenger conspired to commit bank fraud and to make false statements to influence a bank to make a loan in connection with a mortgage fraud scheme involving property in Panama City, Fla.

For the second count, Coppenger conspired to defraud the U.S. by impeding the ability of the Internal Revenue Service to assess his taxes in 2006 by concealing funds he received from a land “flip” conducted by conspirators Andrew Norman and Jason Herceg, who were recently sentenced to 40 months in prison and ordered to pay $14 million in restitution.

According to court documents, Norman and Herceg operated a company in Stow, Ohio, called V.P. Equity LLC, and with Coppenger, they secured straw buyers and submitted false loan documents to financial institutions to purchase Coppenger’s lots in Florida that had already been inflated in value due to a fraudulent property flipping scheme.

The straw buyers resided primarily in the Ohio cities of Akron, Hartville and Mentor. In this scam, they essentially sold their good credit scores to Coppenger which allowed him to secure loans using their names in order to acquire the Florida properties.

As part of the scam, Coppenger promised the straw buyers that he would pay them if they signed the loan application and paperwork. Also, the straw buyers were advised that Coppenger would pay all the mortgage payments for the property and any necessary downpayments. Additionally, once the property was developed and sold, Coppenger said the profits would be split with the straw buyers.

However, Coppenger failed to make the mortgage payments, which resulted in the $36 million loss for the banks.

No decision has been made yet on restitution, but the government has asked for $35 million.

“This was all greed. This was all planned, this scam and scheme. You knew, and you had to know when this house of cards began to fall. You’re still out looking for new people to prey on,” said U.S. District Judge John Adams when delivering his sentence to Coppenger.

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