A former Rhode Island state senator and North Providence real estate attorney has been sentenced to 27 months in federal prison for bank fraud.
Christopher Maselli pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Providence last November to eight counts of bank fraud admitting that he falsified bank and federal tax documents. Maselli said he lied about his income and assets by obtaining more than $1.7 million in mortgages and loans.
According to assistant U.S. attorney Dulce Donovan, Maselli applied for a series of loans, mostly mortgage loans, from several federally insured banks. But to qualify for these loans, the defendant produced fabricated documentation for false tax returns and bank statements to support inaccurate claims regarding his income and assets. Except for one case, the banks relied on these erroneous statements when giving the defendant a loan.
Maselli began his schemes in May 2007 by signing a purchase and sale agreement to buy land and a home with his wife for $200,000. The defendant used his wife’s grandmother as a straw borrower by applying for two mortgages in her name that totaled $200,000. The grandmother was falsely told that she would be co-signing the loan with her granddaughter, with her name being removed from the mortgage three months after the purchase.
However, Maselli submitted the loan application to the bank with his wife’s grandmother named as the sole applicant. Donovan said this made it look like she was the real purchaser of the property and the true borrower of the loan.
Donovan said Maselli created numerous false documents and misleading information on the loan applications pertaining to his wife’s grandmother’s assets and income. A week after the closing, a deed transfer was completed which handed ownership of the property from the grandmother to Maselli.
Donovan said Maselli followed similar tactics in his other scams where he lied about his income and assets and produced fictitious paperwork for tax returns and bank statements supporting the misrepresentations pertaining to his income and assets. The most recent fraud case where Maselli obtained a mortgage and loan took place in March 2009.
There was no plea agreement made between Maselli and the government. Maselli is scheduled to begin his jail sentence on March 10.
