Calif. mortage broker gets 28 years for swindling clients
mercurynews.com | 2/2/08 | Associated Press
SAN JOSE, Calif.—A disgraced mortgage broker was sentenced to 28 years and four months in state prison for embezzling $43 million during a decadelong scheme in which he promised dozens of clients he would invest their money funding mortgages in the Bay Area's heated real estate market.
Prosecutors from Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties said that Michael Schneider, 45, never recorded deeds of trust in his investors' names and used forged documents to trick them into loaning his company money that he spent to support himself and his family.
"Every day that you went into someone's house" to carry out a fraud, "that was a day that you came home to these kids whom you loved. At no time did you ever stop to think of the consequences," Superior Court Judge Ray Cunningham told Schneider before handing down the sentence Friday.
Schneider pleaded no contest last year to 173 felony charges including embezzlement, forgery, grand theft and elder financial abuse. His defense lawyer argued for a much shorter prison sentence, saying that Schneider's wife and children would suffer in his absence. The judge also ordered him to repay his victims, many of them elderly people. Authorities said they haven't been able to trace most of the missing money, and about $11 million of Schneider's assets are tied up in bankruptcy court.
"I still don't know what ever happened to all the money," said Norman Rose, 86, who maintains he lost $1.6 million in the scheme.