Home fraud puts woman in prison for eight years

Victims paid dearly to avoid losing their homes.

By JOSE CARDENAS, Times Staff Writer
Published November 20, 2007

A woman who bought the homes of 20 people in shady transactions that cost the sellers more than $500,000, putting them at risk of losing their homes, has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

Synthia Ippolito, a 38-year-old former Largo resident who most recently lived in Hudson, was found guilty in May of scheming to defraud and equity-skimming.

Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Joseph A. Bulone sentenced Ippolito on Friday after a hearing in which the judge also placed a lien on her for the restitution.

Ippolito's former husband, Christopher Nickelson, 46, was sentenced last year to 15 years for his part in the fraud.

The victims were homeowners from St. Petersburg to Hudson who sold their homes to Nickelson and Ippolito between 1999 and 2001. The homeowners owed little on their homes or owned them completely.

The couple persuaded the homeowners to lend them about half the asking price of the houses, Assistant State Attorney Evan Brodsky argued.

The couple promised the homeowners monthly payments for a few years, followed by a final balloon payment. The couple then went to private lenders who made them second loans for the rest of the purchase prices.

The deals were structured so that the loans the private lenders made had priority over those made by the original homeowners.

It meant that if the couple stopped paying lenders and sellers, the lenders could foreclose on the original homeowners.

The couple put $70,000 from closings in their pockets and collected rents on the properties until they defaulted on the loans, prosecutors said. The original homeowners had to spend tens of thousands of dollars to pay off the couple's lenders in order to get their homes back.

Nickelson was the mastermind, argued Ippolito's attorney, Robert Tager.

He argued that Nickelson physically abused Ippolito to keep her involved in the fraud.

[Last modified November 19, 2007, 22:15:53]