JNS Blog Working To Dig Up Current Status Of North Minneapolis Mortgage Fraudster Ed Boler...

Creative stock photo, blog post by John Hoff

A very interesting conversation is taking place behind the scenes about Ed Boler, a convicted mortgage fraudster who, along with Susan Newell, was tried for mortgage fraud and then RETRIED due to a hung jury. Prosecutor Brad Johnson, who also got a conviction in the Larry Maxwell mortgage fraud case, was sent in as the "clean up hitter" in the Boler/Newell case.

So what is going on with Boler these days? (I'll leave aside the question of what's going on with Susan Newell) A commenter to this blog asserted Boler has a new job involving property in another state, click here and read the comments.

That anonymous, ALL CAPS comment sent one of this blog's behind-the-scenes Santa's research helpers running to dig up information. Suffice to say I should have something interesting in the near future, but there DOES seem to be something to the rumors.

In the meantime, my researcher discovered an old link with the Boler and Newell criminal complaints was dead. Well, I can't have that. The historical record needs to be available for those who care to dig into that golden era of mortgage fraud which changed the face of North Minneapolis.

Here is the criminal compliant for Ed Boler, click here.

And here is the complaint for Susan Newell. 

NOT EVEN CLOSE TO BREAKING NEWS: Probation Revoked For Mortgage Fraudster Ed Boler...

Creative stock photo, (this stuff was apparently left behind by Soviets in Afghanistan) blog post by John Hoff

Unlike the mainstream media, this blog makes no pretense of omniscience. If important news happened half a year ago, and we just completely missed it, we'll say so...and then go ahead and report it.

Edward "Ed" Leon Boler, who was convicted along with Susan Newell in a mortgage fraud scheme had his probation revoked in December of last year, by the Honorable Judge Lloyd B. Zimmerman. Boler had a long sentence hanging over his head, but based on what I'm seeing on MNCIS, it appears Boler is only serving 365 days in the workhouse, "No furloughs or work release per judge," and started his sentence on January 2 of this year.

Well, I'm sure glad I found out before he COMPLETED his sentence.

Mug Shot For Susan Newell, Mortgage Fraudster...

DOC mug shot, therefore public domain, blog post by John Hoff


Susan Elizabeth Newell won't end up doing very much time for mortgage fraud in North Minneapolis, a mere three years...all the more reason to make sure her DOC mug shot is permanently preserved in this public forum.

Readers may recall that Newell was a messy retrial-after-mistrial that required Hennepin County Prosecutor Brad Johnson to come in and clean up the legal mess, click here for previous story.

According to the Department of Corrections website, Newell will be eligible for release on April 23, 2013.

Oooooh, let's guess what The Future will be like when Newell finally walks free?

United States forces will be in Afghanistan, but there will be talk of the troops leaving in the not-so-distant future.

The Diane Hofstede staff turnover widget will be in...DOUBLE DIGITS.

And a blog called Johnny Northside Dot Com will be stirring the pot in North Minneapolis, but sometimes involved in legal battles.

Hope I haven't gone overboard in my imaginative speculation.

(Do Not Click "Read More")

Susan Newell Sentencing: Many Minor Children, A Cry of Anguish, Filled Up Seats...

Contributed photo, blog post by John Hoff

I received some bits and pieces of information from the Susan Newell sentencing. Newell was involved in mortgage fraud, some of which happened in North Minneapolis. The sentencing has already been reported elsewhere, click here.

Newell's first trial resulted in a mistrial, so Hennepin County Prosecutor Brad Johnson got in there and took care of business, bringing home the long-awaited conviction. Johnson is currently running for Anoka County Attorney, click here.

According to what I was told about the sentencing by an observer, sheriff's deputies were there and keeping people out because it was...

...already full inside. The people inside appeared to be mostly Newell family and supporters, some of which apparently came from her church. There was an odd air of confidence in these spectators, and some loose talk about how maybe the sentence wouldn't be too bad at all. Why, maybe she'd even get probation and no prison time at all! But, instead, Newell got three years. She will likely serve two years in prison, and then parole for a year after.

It was about 3:45 p.m. when the court room emptied and there was much crying and hugging in the hallway. An individual who appeared to be a defense attorney spoke to an individual presumed to be a family member, saying something like, "The letter you wrote helped, really."

Suddenly there was a cry from an anguished voice--it came from either inside the courtroom, or the elevator on the other side of the court room. A male voice said, "I CAN'T DO THIS ON MY OWN!" The tone was a tone of despair. Who emitted the cry is unknown, but one would assume it was a close family member.

The prosecutor in this case asked for 122 months, which is a bit more than ten years. What the government had asked for was "a guidelines sentence for a severity level 9 offense," which would have been consistent with other mortgage fraud cases in Hennepin County, like Larry Maxwell, click here. Instead, the government got a guideline sentence for a Level 6, lower than what the government asked for.

Newell is currently 40 years old and will go away until she is 42, then on parole until 43. If she reoffends before the Year of Our Lord 2020, it's on His Honor Judge Tom Sipkins. Hennepin County asked for more. Let these words endure until at least 2020, if somebody has need to quote them. (It should be noted the judge was Sipkins, but the courtroom was that of Judge Janish, pronounced Yan-ish)

This case was reportedly one of Judge Sipkins' first criminal cases, and in this instance the defendant was a mother with 10 children (you read that right) at least five of which are under 18. The children were in the court room during the trial, almost every day according to one source.

(For the record--and most of my friends are likely to disagree--I do not find this manipulative practice of using children as a legal "human shield" to be at all objectionable. It is my position that nothing should be thicker than family blood. Simultaneously, I believe Newell should have gone away for 10 years and, for the record, I'm sure all that mortgage fraud money bought many unearned goodies for that extremely large brood of offspring. I hope there's enough fraudulent money squirreled away somewhere to pay for a vasectomy)

Newell's husband is a fire fighter in Minneapolis. One way to look at Newell's sentence is like this: she will miss a total of ten years of her children's lives.

In an incredibly odd footnote of arcane trivia: Susan Newell shares her name with that of the last woman hanged in Scotland, click here.

(Blogging from near Disney World, Florida)

Susan Newell Mortgage Fraud Sentencing Monday, April 26, 2:30 PM, Room 927

Photo and blog post by John Hoff, truck was not running when this image was taken as trucker texting is now forbidden by DOT

Word reaches me while I am on the road trucking of a sentencing hearing in the Susan Newell mortgage fraud matter, previously reported on this blog, click here and also here. The Judge in this matter is Judge Janish, (pronounced YAN-ish) and the hearing will be in Room 957, Monday, April 26, at 2:30. I'm very hopeful somebody affiliated with Johnny Northside Dot Com will manage to get notes on that hearing and I've been sending messages around. You know who you are.

Newell is the case which previously ended in a mistrial until Hennepin County Prosecutor Brad Johnson came in and cleaned up. Johnson is running for Anoka County Attorney, see previous story on this blog, and was recently the subject of coverage in the Star Tribune, click here. In contrast, Johnson's opponent is a sort of desk jockey, not somebody who constantly puts criminals in prison for a long, long time.

I guess while Johnson's "in the rear with the gear" opponent is shaking everybody's hands on Monday, Brad Johnson will be getting his hands dirty doing the actual job of a prosecutor, like his spectacular victory over Larry "Maximum" Maxwell. This was apparently the longest racketeering sentence EVER in a Minnesota State Court. (If anybody has contrary info, I'm still waiting to receive it)

Needless to say, I think folks in Anoka county deserve a prosecutor not a politician. But what does Susan Newell deserve? I guess the judge will tell us on Monday. I can hardly wait to find out.

(Blogging from Frankfort, KY. Do not click "Read More.")

Susan Newell and Ed Boler: Fraud Begets Fraud

Guest post and photos by the Hawthorne Hawkman.

In a recent post about mortgage fraud convictions, I was asked to do a miniature photo tour of the handful of NoMi properties impacted by the fraudulent transactions of Susan Newell and Ed Boler. There were only six properties, so tossing such a small amount of pictures up as a blog post didn't seem like enough work for this former farmboy. So I decided to dig a little deeper into the complaint document.

What I found has me utterly outraged, especially what happened at the property above, 1514 Thomas Avenue North. This is the property that was later owned by Danna D III before going into foreclosure and becoming boarded and vacant. From the looks of it, somebody is making repairs to the windows, since the boards are removed on one side and intact windows are now present. Let's hope this marks a better chapter than the mournful recent history here...

The borrower in this transaction asked Newell how it was possible that he could afford to buy a house when he was only making $5.15/hr at Perkins. But Newell had a plan for how to put this together: White would just keep on buying houses and putting the illicit proceeds from inflated values into a "reserve" until he could afford a home of his own. White was even told to stop asking questions at the closings because it made Newell and Boler look unprofessional.

To make matters worse, the seller was in foreclosure at the time White/Newell/Boler came along. AND Newell was a friend of the family in foreclosure. The sale price was $200,000 and $115,699.90 was disbursed to satisfy the outstanding amount owed from the sheriff's sale. That left a princely sum of $84,300.10 to be split up amongst the seller and any fees. In a normal transaction, the seller would have probably walked away with somewhere around $65-70,000; $50,000 at the LEAST. Not bad if you've just gone through foreclosure.

This, however, was NOT a normal transaction. Newell's real estate company earned a commission of $19,900, and Boler's mortgage firm pocketed $8,045 in fees. Both of those amounts are on the high end of what would have been earned on such a transaction at the time, but not illegal nor unheard of. Even that wasn't good enough. The roughly $54,000 still going to the seller was divided up by the title company in a very odd fashion: three checks for $8,000, $7,000, and $38,907.88. The last, and largest, check was purportedly endorsed by the seller and then deposited into an account belonging to Newell's company. (No responsible title company would allow such a transfer.) The seller claims to have never seen nor endorsed this check.

So to summarize, 1514 Thomas Ave N was in foreclosure in 2005, Newell took advantage of both an unsophisticated buyer and a vulnerable seller to initiate a closing at what was probably an inflated price. The seller was robbed of at least $38,900 in proceeds, the house was probably not maintained by the buyer, and then it wound up in the hands of Danna D III. It has been foreclosed upon yet again, and remains boarded and vacant.

This kind of chain reaction has been happening over and over in our neighborhoods and it's high time we put a stop to it. Getting the offenders into prison is a start, but we also need systemic, preventative measures.

For better or worse, I won't be discussing such measures in this post. Instead, we continue with the photo tour of other Newell/Boler properties.

There were a few rather boring properties, in that they were in decent shape and appeared occupied. First, 818 Queen Ave N:


Next, 2207 Aldrich Ave N:


And then 4527 Bryant Ave N:


2720-22 Penn Ave N was hard to spot since there were no houses on that lot. In fact, I couldn't even tell which lot it was. I had it narrowed down to the lot with the buried road construction sign or the lot with the floral memorial taped to a tree:



2918 Russell, however, was another vacant property with issues.





The garage has been broken open and haphazardly closed off. The notice of condemnation is so old that the sun has bleached it white and the writing in marker is no longer visible. And a sticker on the door informs us that the place was winterized in October. Of 2006. This house has likely been vacant since being a part of Newell/Boler transactions.

Now the way that Newell and Boler carried out their fraud was pretty typical for transactions at that time. They appeared to handle both the buyers' and sellers' sides of the transaction, inflate the purchase price, and then split the proceeds. The buyer would either use a "stated income" or "no doc" loan (often misrepresenting whether the property would be owner-occupied) or would falsify income on the mortgage application. For the record, falsifying information on "stated income" loans is still fraud; the income stated should be reflective of the borrower's actual pay. Inflated fees or fabrications on the closing documents allowed proceeds to be funneled to the entity of Boler's or Newell's choosing.

What I hadn't seen before in this complaint document was that BOTH Newell and Boler lied about their previous criminal convictions in order to get their licenses. Boler "was convicted and sentenced to prison in 1994 in Hennepin County for second degree controlled substance crime, and also convicted in 1997 in Minnesota federal district court of possession with intent to distribute cocaine."

Newell "has an extensive criminal history under her maiden name, Susan Elizabeth Brown, including felony convictions for theft by swindle in January 1999, wrongfully obtaining public assistance in 1996, theft by swindle in 1991, and financial transaction card fraud in 1991." I wouldn't trust this person with her own debit card, much less a REAL ESTATE BROKER'S LICENSE.

The fact that these events transpired at all is outrageous. Thank God that perpetrators such as Boler and Newell are in prison, but we've got a lot more crooked actors to chase down and a lot more messes to clean up.

Conviction, Finally, In Susan Newell And Ed Boler Mortgage Fraud Case...

Stock Photo by John Hoff, Hennepin County Government Building

Blog post by John Hoff

In a mortgage fraud case that included properties in North Minneapolis, and spanned two long, complex trials due to a quirky juror and a mistrial, the conviction of Susan Newell finally happened some days ago. Newell was convicted on multiple counts of theft by swindle and one count of racketeering, with aggravating factors.

The Star Tribune wrote an article about the conviction--which I loathe linking to, because Star Tribune links have a tendency to go dead and sometimes get "sticky" when you're trying to pull up the link. I've spent two years griping about this but nothing changes at the Star Tribune, except they seem to have fewer employees all the time and more trees just keep dying to put out newsprint. Whatever. The article was unsatisfying in a number of aspects, and I'd like to list those aspects and add more information about the recent conviction.

First and foremost--here's a link, click here, to the actual criminal complaint in the case, which conveniently lists all the properties at issue including--here's my main interest--the ones in North Minneapolis. Would it have been so hard for the Star Tribune to provide access to this document via a link from their online story? I mean, it's not like the Media Relations person at the County Attorney's office didn't, gee, put it right on their website.

Secondly...

...two attorneys at the prosecutor's office put in hundreds of hours into this case yet were not even named in the article. They are Brad Johnson and Wendy Zeller. Johnson was the attorney who landed the conviction of Larry Maxwell, which this blog reported in extensive detail. (Liz Johnston also worked the Larry Maxwell case)

Third, there were many details lacking from the article, such as the fact Susan Newell--who now almost certainly faces a term in prison--has a number of children, some of which were reportedly in the court room. She was NOT taken into custody after the verdict. I certainly wouldn't bet money on Susan Elizabeth Newell showing up for sentencing. Newell has an extensive criminal history, as documented in the criminal complaint.

Fourth--and here I'm merely making a point, not criticizing the Star Tribune--Susan Newell should have made some kind of desperate plea bargain instead of rolling the dice. One mortgage fraudster after another has been taken down by the county prosecutor in the last couple years. It took two shots to get Newell, but get her they did.

Anybody charged with crimes related to mortgage fraud would be well-advised, in Hennepin County, to make some kind of deal. But it seems like mortgage scammers are an overly-confident bunch, who always think they can somehow beat the rap. At least it makes for a somewhat entertaining legal spectacle.

For the sake of the historical record, and the convenience of future would-be property owners, here's a list of the properties in North Minneapolis which were caught up in this mortgage fraud. Photo tour, anybody?

2207 Aldrich Ave. N.

818 Queen Ave. N.

2720-2722 Penn Ave. N.

2918 Russell Ave. N.

4527 Bryant Ave. N.

1514 Thomas Ave. N.

(This last property, notably, fell into the hands of the infamous Dana D III entity)

Mortgage Fraud Trials Pending For Tynessia Snoddy, Susan Newell...

Contributed Photo, 1564 Hillside Ave. N., involved in mortgage fraud 

According to the Media Relations Office of the Hennepin County Attorney, "the curtain rises tomorrow" on the trial of Susan Newell for mortgage fraud. 

A previous trial of Newell resulted in a hung jury. Rumor around the courthouse is a single juror decided to stick with her dictionary definition of "swindle" rather than the statutory definition. That probably won't happen again with this trial. Click here for more information about the charges against Susan Newell.

Also, many JNS Blog readers have been wondering when the trial of Tynessia Snoddy will move forward. Word from Media Relations is a hearing will happen on March 19, 2010 and the trial itself is set for July 6, 2010. Snoddy is charged with four counts of identity fraud. The facts of her case are intertwined with those of convicted mortgage fraudster Larry Maxwell. 

Snoddy--whose birthday is 4/30/1974--is reportedly represented by criminal defense attorney Emmett Donnelly, whose clients include, for example, Jamaal Freeman, who was accused of killing bicyclist Mark Loesch, click here for the criminal indictment.

(Do not click "Read More")