Ex-Cook County Land Bank Authority employee gets prison in fraud case

[December 20, 2023]  By Brett Rowland | The Center Square

(The Center Square) – A former Cook County Land Bank Authority employee facing up to 20 years behind bars for a scheme to buy property at a discount and then resell it through straw buyers was sentenced to a year in prison.  

The Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse in Chicago on Monday, April 24, 2023. - By Brett Rowland | The Center Square

Mustafaa Saleh pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors.

Prosecutors previously alleged the former employee of the Cook County Land Bank Authority used straw buyers from 2016 to 2021 to fraudulently buy and resell properties from the government agency on his behalf. Prosecutors alleged Saleh pocketed $172,706 in profits from the deals. Prosecutors said Saleh also created a company that was paid $1 million to provide maintenance to the properties. Because of his ties to the land bank, Saleh wasn't allowed to have any financial interest in companies contracting with the agency.

In the end, Saleh agreed to forfeit $172,706 in profits from the scheme, according to court records.

Saleh was an asset manager the Cook County Land Bank Authority, a government agency that promotes the redevelopment and reuse of vacant, foreclosed, abandoned, and tax delinquent real estate by buying and transferring the property to private ownership.

The agency sold the real estate at below-market rates and prohibited the buyers from selling or renting a property until it was satisfied that the buyer had improved it to the agency's standards. Authority employees are prohibited from buying property from the agency unless it would be used for the employee's primary residence.

Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Saleh to 33 months in prison.

"Defendant's conduct as the leader of this scheme was both significant and longlasting. Over the course of 5 years, defendant took repeated, sustained actions to financially benefit himself. Defendant’s crimes were no one-time mistake or lapse of judgment – the fraud was intricately planned, continuously executed over the course of years, and involved several layers of concealment," prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo. "The properties that defendant bought from the CCLBA might have instead gone to an individual in financial need seeking to become a homeowner, who could not otherwise afford a home absent the substantial discounts offered by the CCLBA. That home, in turn, could have served to enrich an honest homeowner by providing long-term financial security. Defendant's scheme not only circumvented the CCLBA's goal, but also ensured that any financial benefits would not pour into the communities and people he pledged to serve."

Prosecutors noted Saleh "enacted his fraud scheme to the detriment of an important government organization and the honest individuals whom it was intended to benefit."