Nik Patel’s Prison Stay Extends by 27 Years After Another $8.5 Million Fraud – Fraud Friday
October 25, 2024
Delaney Sexton
Contributing Editor
Nik Patel’s Prison Stay Extends by 27 Years After Another $8.5 Million Fraud – Fraud Friday
To Nik Patel, $179 million was not enough, nor was another $19 million. From the federal prison he has been in for the last 6 years, he was executing yet another scheme to defraud the USDA and other lenders. The government did not take kindly to this and sentenced him to another 27 years in prison, bringing his total prison sentence to 52 years.
His wife, Trisha Patel, was caught up in the most recent fraud scheme. She was sentenced to 4 years and 3 months in federal prison. Both Trisha and Nik will have to pay restitution to the USDA and four other financial institutions.
This go-around was like his previous schemes with only a slight difference. Nik and Trisha created a fake lender and loan officer to pull off the fraud, but this time, they used a legitimate business to carry out the loan fraud. Community 1st Mortgage “loaned” the business $8.54 million. They then applied for and received an 80% guarantee from the USDA. After receiving the guarantee, they sold the loan for $7.4 million to Hanover Securities who then broke down the loan into smaller portions and resold them to other banks.
The evidence certainly was not in the couple’s favor. A prison search quickly revealed 3,000 pages of neatly stacked fraudulent loan documents underneath Nik’s mattress. He didn’t just leave a literal paper trail; he left a figurative one too. In the jail email system, there was a history of emails from Nik that contained exact language that Trisha needed to use when sending emails related to the fraud.
Along with the current 52 year sentence, Nik pleaded guilty to 13 charges in 2023 in relation to the $20 million fraud scheme he executed while on federal pretrial release. The sentencing date has yet to be scheduled for this facet of his $200+ million criminal career.