NEWARK—A Park Ridge man was sentenced Nov. 14 to 27 months in federal prison and his Upper Saddle River son to eight months of home confinement for defrauding mortgage lenders out of more than $300,000.
George Bussanich Sr., 60, and George Bussanich Jr., 39, used most of their loot to buy luxury vehicles, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said.
Both defendants admitted in U.S. District Court in Newark that they used sham short sales of two properties—one on Jefferson Avenue in Emerson, the other on Lillian Street in Park Ridge—to swindle mortgage lenders between 2009 and 2012.
The elder Bussanich controlled purported medical clinics and surgical centers in New Jersey, Carpenito said.
Carpenito is responsible for overseeing all federal criminal prosecutions and the litigation of all civil matters in New Jersey in which the federal government has an interest.
Bussanich Sr. recruited his business partner and an employee from a sleep clinic in Cliffside Park to pose as legitimate unrelated buyers of the properties, Carpenito said.
After defrauding 26 investors in the first scam, the father and son agreed to pay $5.5 million, including $4 million in investor restitution, to settle a suit filed by the New Jersey Bureau of Securities, but they then proceeded to defraud 15 of the same investors of $3 million in a second scam.
In addition to their sentences—both for tax evasion and the elder Bussanich also for bank fraud conspiracy—U.S. District Judge Claire C. Cecchi handed down five years of federally supervised release for the father and three years for the son, per plea bargains.
Carpenito credited special agents of the FBI and the IRS with the investigation leading to those pleas, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ari B. Fontecchio of his Economic Crimes Unit and Nicholas P. Grippo, Attorney in Charge of the U.S. Attorney’s Trenton Office.
According to state Attorney General Grubir Grewal in March, the pleas ensured that the Bussaniches would face substantial prison sentences for their schemes, “in which they ruthlessly stole the life savings of elderly investors to bankroll their own expensive homes, high end cars, and luxury dining and travel.”
He added, “What makes this case even more egregious is that they defrauded many of the same elderly retirees a second time after the first scheme was exposed, playing on their desperation to recover their lost savings.”
