Delbert Baptiste, 45, Kings County, New York, pled guilty to grand larceny in the second degree and was sentenced to three to nine years in prison for a mortgage fraud scheme totaling more than two million dollars.

Baptiste used the property at 600 St. Marks Place, Crown Heights, Ney York, to defraud several mortgage companies. He repeatedly recruited acquaintances to pose as purchasers and allow their credit to be used in order to obtain mortgages in their names. These individuals were merely straw buyers and Baptiste, in fact, retained control of the property and resold it several times at inflated values, thus realizing a profit. For their participation in the scheme, straw buyers received a payment from Baptiste.

Between June 1 and October 29, 2003, Baptiste arranged to obtain a $512,000 loan from US Mortgage to purchase the property. The straw buyer earned $10,000; Baptiste earned $69,000. In 2003 and 2005, Baptiste again arranged for the fraudulent sale of the property at inflated values, thus obtaining several additional fraudulent mortgages, totaling $1.5 million.