JACKSON – Former Greenwood judge and attorney Bobby Fisher will spend 27 months in federal prison for his role in a mortgage fraud scheme.
Fisher and two other people were sentenced Thursday by Judge Henry Wingate in U.S. District Court.
Fisher, 50, was also ordered to make restitution of $768,501.
The former Greenwood Municipal Court judge said in court Thursday that he knew the loans were fraudulent, The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson reported.
“It was an out-of-control practice,” Fisher said. “I regret I was involved in fraud and committed the fraud.”
Fisher said he was ashamed and embarrassed by his actions.
Fisher reports to prison Jan. 3. He voluntarily signed an agreement with the Mississippi Bar giving up his license to practice law forever in the state.
Fisher was involved in 48 fraudulent loans totaling $2.8 million. The scheme involved recruiting people who wanted mortgages and falsifying their income and other information on the applications.
Fisher pleaded guilty in January 2006, but his sentence was delayed for more than five years while he cooperated with prosecutors and while the courts changed the way sentencing guidelines are determined in mortgage fraud cases.
Prosecutors also recommended to the judge that Fisher draw a more lenient sentence because of his cooperation in their investigation.
Fisher has served as the longtime chairman of the Roy Martin Delta Band Festival, the annual Christmas parade sponsored by the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce. He is credited with being instrumental in reviving that 76-year-old event.
Suresh Chawla, the chamber’s president, said that Fisher would continue to serve as co-chair of the band festival with Glen Stevens through this year’s production, scheduled for Dec. 2.
“Over the last two decades, Bobby has helped make the Band Festival the huge success that it is,” Chawla said in an email today.
Joni Lynn Goss, 46, a former Greenwood resident who now lives in Ridgeland, also received a break on her sentencing for cooperating with the government.
Under sentencing guidelines, Goss faced from 10 to 16 months in prison. But Wingate sentenced her to eight months of house arrest and five years of probation. She was ordered to make restitution of $155,768.
“I took into consideration that she was the very first person to come forward, she cooperated extensively,” Wingate said of why he departed from the guidelines, according to The Clarion-Ledger. “At no time did she fail to admit her guilt.”
Goss, now remarried, told Wingate she and her former husband made a lot of money off the mortgage fraud scheme.
“Absolutely, I realized I did wrong,” Joni Goss said from the witness stand during her sentencing hearing, the Jackson newspaper reported.
Goss’ attorney, Michael Brown, asked her why she had done “something so stupid.”
She replied, “I got caught up in the mortgage fraud scheme. I was very much involved. Once I got in, I didn’t get out. I knew it was wrong.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Carla Clark and IRS Criminal Investigation Division special agent Phil Hull said Goss reported the scheme prior to any charges in the case and gave information on how the scheme worked.
Wingate sentenced John William Emory III, 58, a former Ridgeland mortgage loan originator, to 10 months of home confinement and placed him on five years of probation.
Emory was ordered to make restitution of $98,536.
On Wednesday, Matt Howard Jr., 35, a Leflore County farmer and former mortgage broker, was sentenced to six months in federal prison and ordered to make restitution of $25,634.
Two others, Leflore County native Jason Ellis and Michael Persac of Madison, will be sentenced Wednesday.
All of the defendants pleaded guilty in the mortgage scam four to six years ago. But sentencing of the six in the mortgage fraud case was put on hold by a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2008 in a case involving Goss’ former husband, Toby Goss of Greenwood.
In that precedent-setting ruling, the court said a loan-by-loan inquiry should be done to determine the actual loss on each loan and that amount should be used in determining the sentence range.
With the ruling, the government is now forced to determine the actual loss amount instead of just using intended loss or stating an overall loan amount.
The decision delayed sentencing because of the complex calculations and many of the companies have since gone out of business.
Jim Pruett, a former Greenwood real estate developer who worked with Fisher, did not receive the benefit of that revision. One of the first to be sentenced in the wide-ranging case, he drew a three-year sentence in 2006 and died inside an Arkansas federal penitentiary in 2007.
