Upstate New Yorker gets six months for South Boston condo scam

By adamg on Thu, 07/30/2015 - 12:34pm

A Skaneateles, N.Y. man who set up shop in Brighton, was sentenced to six months in federal prison this week for his role in a scheme in which he and his associates profited from mortgage fees on a building they converted to condos at 25-31 W 5 St. in South Boston, the US Attorney's office reports.

Michael St. Claire will also have to spend four months in home confinement and pay $1.2 million in restitution for the scheme to defraud lenders.

St. Claire had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. According to federal prosecutors, his Morpheus, LLC bought the ramshackle building and turned it into 12 condos. Then, prosecutors say, he and his accomplices recruited sham buyers and made up bogus income statements for lenders. The lenders approved the loans, St. Claire and pals paid off the sham buyers and pocketed the fees - after which the buyers promptly defaulted.

The feds say lenders lost $1 million to the scheme.

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Details of the scheme	194.17 KB

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Comments

This explains a bit

By KSquared on Thu, 07/30/2015 - 12:54pm.

I used to live in that building, post-foreclosure. It's still a bit ramshackle, but now I understand why my rent was relatively low.

So much explained!

By anon on Thu, 07/30/2015 - 2:20pm.

I live there now and wow, this really does explain a lot. Some of those sham buyers must have stayed, because I have no idea how some of the owners actually have it together enough to own. And, the management of the building is terrible because the condo docs are written so poorly (e.g., all votes have to be a unanimous "yes" by all 12 owners to move forward instead of having 3-4 elected trustees making decisions). I've wondered why anyone would set up such a structure in the first place, but this explains it.

I'm not surprised

By Anon on Thu, 07/30/2015 - 5:24pm.

and I wouldn't be surprised that there are not more problem developments out there. With so many gullible people looking for units in Southie there's going to be problems with associations, foreclosures and claims of shoddy workmanship in the years to come.

There's a current listing for

By Heather on Fri, 07/31/2015 - 6:23pm.

There's a current listing for this property at the moment:

https://www.redfin.com/MA/South-Boston/31-W-5th-St-02127/unit-3/home/189...

No photos with the listing, so yeah, shady.

just sold too

By KSquared on Wed, 08/05/2015 - 10:51am.

Also shady: sold on April 16, 2015 for $196K. I really doubt that $130K worth of improvements a) could be done at all in that space and b) could be done in under two months.