(The Center Square) – A former Cook County Land Bank Authority employee facing up to 20 years behind bars for a scheme to buy property at a discount and then resell it through straw buyers was sentenced to a year in prison.
Mustafaa Saleh pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors.
Prosecutors previously alleged the former employee of the Cook County Land Bank Authority used straw buyers from 2016 to 2021 to fraudulently buy and resell properties from the government agency on his behalf. Prosecutors alleged Saleh pocketed $172,706 in profits from the deals. Prosecutors said Saleh also created a company that was paid $1 million to provide maintenance to the properties. Because of his ties to the land bank, Saleh wasn’t allowed to have any financial interest in companies contracting with the agency.
In the end, Saleh agreed to forfeit $172,706 in profits from the scheme, according to court records.
Saleh was an asset manager the Cook County Land Bank Authority, a government agency that promotes the redevelopment and reuse of vacant, foreclosed, abandoned, and tax delinquent real estate by buying and transferring the property to private ownership.
The agency sold the real estate at below-market rates and prohibited the buyers from selling or renting a property until it was satisfied that the buyer had improved it to the agency’s standards. Authority employees are prohibited from buying property from the agency unless it would be used for the employee’s primary residence.
Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Saleh to 33 months in prison.
“Defendant’s conduct as the leader of this scheme was both significant and longlasting. Over the course of 5 years, defendant took repeated, sustained actions to financially benefit himself. Defendant’s crimes were no one-time mistake or lapse of judgment – the fraud was intricately planned, continuously executed over the course of years, and involved several layers of concealment,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo. “The properties that defendant bought from the CCLBA might have instead gone to an individual in financial need seeking to become a homeowner, who could not otherwise afford a home absent the substantial discounts offered by the CCLBA. That home, in turn, could have served to enrich an honest homeowner by providing long-term financial security. Defendant’s scheme not only circumvented the CCLBA’s goal, but also ensured that any financial benefits would not pour into the communities and people he pledged to serve.”
Prosecutors noted Saleh “enacted his fraud scheme to the detriment of an important government organization and the honest individuals whom it was intended to benefit.”
Saleh and his attorney, Damon Cheronis, said he didn’t hurt anyone. In a sentencing memo, Cheronis wrote that Selah “used unfortunate and unlawful means to obtain property,” but said he was a good employee and the communities thrived as a result of his self-dealing.
“To that end, Mr. Saleh completed all the work that any other developer would have performed on the six properties at issue, and fully accomplished the mission of the CCLBA by successfully rehabilitating and returning the delinquent properties back into now thriving community assets,” Cheronis wrote in the memo. “To be clear, Mr. Saleh fully recognizes his actions in this case were both wrong and criminal. By obtaining these properties through artifice he violated the trust of his employers and broke the law. This is the odd case where although the means by which Mr. Saleh committed this crime were complicated, there is no monetary loss to the CCLBA. Ethical violations occurred – to be sure – but true economic harm was not wrought on the county.”
Cheronis did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Jessica Caffrey, executive director of the Cook County Land Bank Authority, said the whole agency was a victim.
“The Cook County Land Bank Authority is grateful to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for its thorough investigation of a former employee,” she told The Center Square. “The CCLBA cooperated fully with the U.S. Attorney’s investigation; the agency, board members, executive directors and other staff were victims of this crime and never the subject or target of this investigation.”
U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood sentenced Saleh to one year and a day in prison and required he give up $172,706.
