Key Player in Huge NE OH Mortgage Fraud Case Pleads Guilty

Uri Gofman used seed money from Latvia to start his real estate investment business rehabbing houses and selling them to investors as rental properties. How big prosecutors say that business got is staggering: Over 500 real estate transactions - nearly all on the east side of Cleveland and the inner ring suburbs. $44 M million in fraudulent loans. $31 M million in profits. The case was so big it even had two simultaneous indictments - one in federal court and one in Cuyahoga County court. Last spring, Gofman, proclaiming his innocence, took the federal case to trial. Most of the key players in the hundreds of deals: the title company officer, the mortgage broker, the investors and some of the real estate agents admitted to lying on loan documents in order to get loans. After more than a month of testimony and over a million pages of documents, the jury couldn't make a decision on about half the charges and found Gofman guilty on the rest. Gofman's attorney, Michael Goldberg, says his client is scheduled to be sentenced in the federal case next month. Goldberg said Gofman decided to plead guilty in the larger county case for the sake of his family.
The title company officer in the Gofman case, Anthony Capuozzo, was sentenced Wednesday to one year in prison by Cuyahoga County Court Judge Daniel Gaul. Capuozzo was sentenced in federal court earlier this year to 26 months.