Man gets four years for role in condo-flipping scheme, but might get to serve time in Ireland

A federal judge last week sentenced Patrick Lee, 46, to four years in federal prison and ordered him to pay $842,552 in restitution to two banks he admitted he helped defraud as part of a scheme involving mortgages for three deckers converted into condos in Dorchester and South Boston between 2005 and 2007.

US District Court Judge Patti Saris urged the federal Bureau of Prisons and the Justice Department to agree with Lee's request that he be sent to an Irish prison to serve out his term so that he can be closer to his wife, who lives in Ireland and who was permanently disabled in a car crash there in 2014, and their two children. Ireland is one of the countries with which the US has a treaty allowing for such prisoner transfers.

Last November, Lee, who was born in Ireland but who has American citizenship, pleaded guilty to helping defraud lenders on payments on mortgages on condos in several buildings in the two neighborhoods in his work as a real-estate appraiser.

According to the US Attorney's office in Boston:

Lee or a relative bought five multi-family buildings in Dorchester and South Boston, financed those purchases with fraudulently obtained mortgage loans, and quickly converted the buildings to condominiums which facilitated the resale of individual units in the buildings to straw buyers. The straw buyers were recruited for this purpose and their purchases were financed with fraudulently obtained mortgage loans. The straw buyers were assured that they would not have to put any money down or pay the mortgages, and that they would get a fee at closing and/or a share of the profits when the properties were sold. The loans were funded with interstate wire transfers from the mortgage lenders to the closing attorneys’ conveyancing accounts, and the proceeds were then distributed to Lee and/or a family member, the recruiters, and others involved in the scheme. According to the government, mortgage lenders suffered losses of about $3.9 million.

Lee had moved to County Kildare in Ireland in 2007 with his wife, who is Irish, and their two young daughters. In 2008, the Secret Service filed a sealed criminal complaint against him in Boston federal court. A grand jury indicted him in 2010, although the indictment was not released until 2011, at which point prosecutors began extradition proceedings against him in Ireland.

Lee fought back by claiming he was immune from extradition because he had committed some of the alleged offenses while in Ireland and Irish law forbids extradition for crimes committed on Irish soil. In 2017, his case reached the Irish Supreme Court, which ruled he could be extradited, basically because the core crimes had happened in Boston.