Another member of a mortgage-fraud ring that preyed on low-income New Haven neighborhoods received a federal jail sentence Wednesday.
Charles Lesser, a mortgage broker and loan officer, received the sentence, of 12 months and a day followed by three years of supervised release, in U.S. District Court in New Haven. He was also ordered to pay around $900,000 in restitution.
Seven other members of the conspiracy. masterminded by Joseph “Yossi” Levitin, have received sentences of up to five years in the case. Click here to read about that.
Lesser had faced up to 63 months in prison under federal sentencing guidelines.
Lesser’s attorney, James Ross Smart of Southport, appealed for the reduced sentence based on Lesser’s “rehabilitation, significant life-long civic engagement and good works, and his deep and essential involvement in the care, support upbringing of his large, young family.” Smart’s pre-sentencing memorandum cited Lesser’s religious observance and prior study at a yeshiva, as well as his service in a Jewish burial society.
Using the above chart, Smart also cited the break that Levitin got in the case — receiving 28 months in jail while he pocked at least $700,000. Lesser pocketed a lesser amount — an estimated $41,316.33. (That’s because Levitin cooperated with the government and helped convict some of the same people he’d recruited to the scam. One attorney who pocketed just $51,00 in the scheme but did not help convict accomplices, by contrast, received 20 months.)
Click here to read the memo.
Notice white crooks get small sentences compared to black offenders who steal much less. You call this justice???? Time for local judges to be evaluated on performance like the rest of us.