Prison for Bethel Park man who ran USC mortgage firm
The 50-year-old owner of a former Upper St. Clair mortgage firm was sentenced Jan. 12 to five years in federal prison for fraud.
Richard Stromberg, of Bethel Park, operated Great American Equity at 1035 Boyce Road, and had pleaded guilty in September before District Judge Donnetta Ambrose after he “knowingly conspired with various other individuals (from 2002-08) to defraud lenders,” said U.S. Attorney David Hickton.
According to the final court filing, Stromberg will be in prison for five years, then have supervised probation for five years.
Hickton said the fraud involved submission of loan applications to lenders that misrepresented borrowers’ financial conditions. Banks were defrauded of nearly $2.5 million dollars, and some of the mortgages brokered by Stromberg’s firm ended in foreclosure. Stromberg could have faced 30 years in prison and a fine of $1 million, yet prosecutors and a public defender reached an apparent plea deal.