A group accused of a real estate fraud scheme conspired to steal at least 10 homeowners’ identities and sold their properties “out from under them” without permission, federal officials said.

The accused ringleader has now been sentenced, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a May 3 news release.

Jose Manuel Santiago of Sarasota, Florida, has been sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit mail, wire and bank fraud, federal officials said.

Two of his accused co-conspirators have also pleaded guilty and have been sentenced.

McClatchy News reached out to Santiago’s attorney May 3 but did not immediately receive a response.

The scheme began in February 2020, around the start of the pandemic, allowing the men to take advantage of more remote transactions to assume fake identities and conduct sales, officials said in the December 2023 indictment.

They are accused of obtaining homeowners’ personal information to create “high-quality false identification” bearing a homeowners’ address and another person’s photo, officials said.

Santiago and at least four co-conspirators found properties that weren’t occupied and posed as ailing homeowners or their family members to sell the properties for cheap, sometimes claiming they had to sell in order to pay for medical care, according to prosecutors.

Their scheme spanned the country, including properties on the west coast of Florida; Raleigh, North Carolina; Virginia; and Ohio, officials said.

In one of the early transactions, the accused conspirators pretended to be the family members of a woman who was sick in the hospital and wanted to sell her home before she died, prosecutors said. They sold the home in Tampa for $65,000 and spent the majority of that money on jewelry, as well as a stay at a “hotel and casino resort,” officials said.

Santiago recruited others to appear before notaries, open bank accounts and withdraw money, sometimes paying them with drugs or cash, according to prosecutors.

Some of the transactions were stopped when the parties realized they were fraudulent, but some transactions did go through and cost the real owners, officials said.

In one case, the men sold the fully furnished home of a 20-year U.S. Army veteran in Virginia, officials said. After the sale went through, the new buyer got rid of the homeowner’s personal items, including important military memorabilia and an antique Jeep, officials said.

In another case, the new buyer learned the sale was fraudulent but refused to give the home back to the owner, officials said.

At least five of the victimized homeowners owned property in Florida, according to court records.

The scheme lasted through about February 2021 and landed the accused conspirators more than $580,000, officials said.

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