MANHATTAN (CN) - New York real-estate developer Michael Hershkowitz, 52, pleaded guilty Monday to participating in a multimillion-dollar mortgage scheme.
The developer conned about 70 victims into lending more than $27 million to his company, the Kingsland Group, ostensibly for the renovation of 16 multi-family apartment buildings.
Through mail and wire fraud, he and co-conspirator Ivy Woolf-Turk gave the investors phony recording sheets convincing them that they owned the first mortgages in the renovated properties.
Hershkowitz faces a maximum 20 years in prison and forfeiture of all the money he swindled. Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 9, 2009.
Woolf-Turk will be sentenced on May 27, 2009.
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