Manhattan developer sentenced to five years in $27M mortgage fraud scheme

Manhattan real estate developer Ivy Woolf-Turk, who pleaded guilty in a $27 million mortgage fraud scheme in February, has been sentenced to five years in prison. Woolf-Turk, along with co-conspirator Michael Hershkowitz, who also pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing, had been charged with convincing roughly 70 individuals to invest in Kingsland Group, which they said would renovate 15 upper Manhattan apartment buildings. Instead, prosecutors say, lenders were provided with forged documents on the mortgages they thought they had invested in, and the principal on the loans was never repaid. Lenders filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition against Kingsland in 2007. At the time of Woolf-Turk’s sentencing, the Manhattan district judge also ordered her to forfeit $27 million. [Dow Jones via WSJ]