A Macomb County homebuilder pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, the Departments of Justice, Treasury and Homeland Security reported Friday.

Romeo resident Giuseppe Cracchiolo, 60, entered his plea before U.S. District Court Judge Paul D. Borman Friday morning. Codefendants Atiim Collins, 38, and Ted Carter, 59, both of Detroit, pleaded guilty to the same charge earlier this year. Conspiracy to commit wire fraud is punishable by a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Court documents show that, from 2002 through 2005, Edgewood Property Management owner Collins recruited and paid individuals to act as straw buyers in fraudulent mortgage loan transactions involving homes built by Cracchiolo. Carter participated in the conspiracy by creating false documents used by the straw buyers to support fraudulently inflated asset and income information on their mortgage loan applications.

After the lending companies approved the loans, Cracchiolo used his building company, Mark Christian, Inc., to receive and disburse the illegally gained proceeds. The scheme to defraud resulted in the approval and disbursement of over $4.1 million in fraudulent mortgage loans.

Cracchiolo admitted that he arranged to have the illegally obtained loan proceeds transferred back to borrowers and others without the knowledge and approval of the lending companies. All of the properties involved in the fraud went into foreclosure, resulting in approximately $2.5 million in losses to the lenders.

Judge Borman will sentence Carter on October 6, Collins on November 11, and Cracchiolo on December 2, 2010.

By Margaret Agius

F. Jeffrey Miller, the primary defendant in an alleged $25 million mortgage fraud scheme, has been acquitted by a federal jury.

A jury in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan., on Friday said Miller was not guilty of 56 criminal counts of money laundering and bank fraud.

Miller was one of the top Kansas City-area home builders in 1999 and 2000. He and several others were charged in 2006 with falsifying loan documents to lenders on behalf of customers with credit problems who lacked enough money for down payments on homes. The scheme also involved fraudulently inflated appraisals on homes in the Kansas City area.

Some defendants had been dismissed from the original indictment; several others have pleaded guilty.

Jeffrey Morris, a Berkowitz Oliver Williams Shaw & Eisenbrandt LLP lawyer representing Miller, was not immediately available for comment.

This case is separate from another 2006 indictment against Miller. In 2008, he was convicted along with two others of conspiracy, bank fraud and money laundering for trying to continue to perpetrate his alleged fraud while under his original indictment for the $25 million fraud. A jury ordered Miller to forfeit $2.6 million in that case.

A Kansas City home builder already under indictment for fraud was arrested Thursday in connection with a new federal grand jury indictment for allegedly continuing to operate illegally while his trial is pending.

F. Jeffrey Miller, 45, of Stanley, was indicted in May on charges including conspiracy to commit bank fraud and money laundering. Miller, a building contractor in Kansas, Missouri and other states, was allowed to continue doing business after agreeing that an outside court-approved consultant could monitor his activities, U.S. Attorney for Kansas Eric Melgren said in a release Thursday.

On Wednesday, a federal grand jury in Topeka indicted Miller and three others on new charges of conspiracy, bank fraud, unlawful monetary transactions, destroying records, criminal contempt and interfering with a witness, Melgren said.

Also charged in the new indictment are Stephen W. Vanatta, 43, of Lenexa; Hallie Irvin, 26, of Lenexa; and James Sparks, 35, of Lawson, Mo.

If convicted, Melgren said, the accused would be subject to the following penalties:

* Conspiracy: A maximum of five years in federal prison and a fine of as much as $250,000.
* Bank fraud: A maximum of 30 years and a fine of as much as $1 million on each count.
* Unlawful monetary transactions: A maximum of 10 years and a fine of as much as $250,000.
* Destruction of records in a federal investigation: A maximum of 20 years and a fine of as much as $250,000.
* Attempting to intimidate a witness: A maximum of 10 years and a fine of as much as $250,000.
* Criminal contempt: A maximum of five years and a fine based on the court’s discretion.