Manhattan Real Estate Developer Sentenced to Five Years in Prison in $27 Million Mortgage Fraud

PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that Manhattan real estate developer IVY WOOLF-TURK was sentenced yesterday to five years in prison for her participation in a $27 million Ponzi scheme involving obtaining fraudulent loans secured by nonexistent mortgages. According to the Complaint and other documents filed in the case in Manhattan federal court: WOOLF-TURK, working through a Manhattan real estate development company, The Kingsland Group, Inc., and related entities (collectively, "The Kingsland Group"), fraudulently induced approximately 100 individuals to lend the Kingsland Group over $27 million to fund the renovation of approximately sixteen multi-family apartment buildings located in upper Manhattan. WOOLF-TURK and a co-conspirator, MICHAEL HERSHKOWITZ, falsely represented that the lenders would hold, as collateral for the loans, interests in bona fide first mortgages in the various properties in which they thought they were investing. In fact, WOOLF-TURK did not record mortgages on behalf of the lenders. Posted in: Internal Fraud