A North Carolina man convicted of mortgage fraud and sent to prison was sentenced to 36 months in prison for violating the terms of his supervised release and structuring transactions to avoid reporting requirements.
Ricky Lamont Congleton was sentenced to 66 months in prison in October of 2014, followed by five years of supervised release, for orchestrating a multi-million-dollar mortgage fraud upon various banks. Congleton and his collaborators used “straw buyers” to purchase properties that he and others had developed and then tapped into the aid of a conspiring attorney to sell the properties at a discount by concealing from banks that he had supplied the down payments on the sales.
After being released from prison but while on federal supervision, an investigation was opened into Congleton’s movement of large amounts of cash into bank accounts that were then used to purchase new properties. The investigation determined Congleton evaded reporting requirements by breaking approximately $100,000 in cash into small amounts and depositing the money into different banks in different cities. This act of breaking up cash transactions to avoid bank reporting requirements is a federal criminal offense and is commonly known as “structuring.”
Congleton pled guilty to the charge last November and was sentenced to the top of the guideline range – 24 months in prison, followed by an additional consecutive year for committing the offense while on supervised release. Congleton was also sentenced to an additional three years of supervised release.
Photo by Rainerzufall1234 / Wikimedia Commons
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