Newport man gets 7 years in real estate fraud

A Newport Beach man was sentenced Friday to seven years in prison for his part in a scheme that used forged documents and straw buyers to commit more than $16 million in real estate fraud, according to authorities.

Dinesh Valjeebhai Shah, 65, pleaded guilty last week to five felony counts of conspiracy to commit a crime, 13 felony counts of forgery, four felony counts of identity theft, five felony counts of grand theft and other charges.

He received sentencing enhancements for losses over $100,000, property damage over $1.3 million and aggravated white collar crime over $500,000

From 2006 to 2009, prosecutors say Shah and three family members used credit information from these straw buyers to apply for home loans.

The buyers willingly let the family use their information with no intent of actually owning a home, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Shah and his co-conspirators would then forge the straw-buyers’ signatures, inflate their income and use the information to apply for home loans, according to prosecutors.

The scammers did this 15 times to net about $16 million of fraudulent loans from then-Washington Mutual Bank, prosecutors said.

Shah was the last of the crew to be sentenced for the crime.

Suniti Shah, 53; Supriti Soni, 54, and Sushama Devi Lohia, 76, each pleaded guilty to dozens of fraud and conspiracy-related felonies in 2011 or 2012.

They received sentences ranging from eight to nine years in state prison, according to the district attorney.