Former Greenleaf co-owner accepts jail time for bank fraud

With his guilty plea filed late last week, the former co-owner of Greenleaf Cos. has agreed to serve four years in federal prison for aiding and abetting a bank fraud conspiracy that was part of a two-year mortgage investment scheme.

Eric Gagnepain, 41, of Nixa, also agreed to plead guilty to state charges, and would serve that sentence concurrently with the federal sentence. The sentencing hearing for the federal charges will be scheduled following the presentence investigation by the U.S. Probation Office, according to a news release from the office of Tammy Dickinson, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri.

Gagnepain and Scott Dasal, 47, of Republic, operated Greenleaf Cos. and its subsidiaries from 2006 through May 2008, during which the company sponsored real estate investment seminars designed to recruit investors for mortgage loans on the construction and sale of residential homes in southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas. Greenleaf typically solicited investors with good credit and marketed the residential properties to people with troubled credit histories, and it failed to make full payments to investors, according to Springfield Business Journal reporting. Greenleaf and a subsidiary, The Real Estate Co., also failed to tell buyers the titles of homes were in the names of the investors and failed to advise consumers when their homes were in danger of foreclosure.

In his guilty plea filed Jan. 9, Gagnepain admitted he aided and abetted others in creating and submitting fraudulent mortgage loan documents. The documents contained false statements regarding the true source of funding at the time of closing, as well as fraudulently omitting the payment of monies from the sale of the real estate properties, the release said.

According to his plea, Gagnepain received more than $1 million in gross receipts from his criminal conduct, and the bank fraud conspiracy totaled between $2.5 million and $7 million. Dasal was sentenced in November to three years in federal prison without parole and restitution of $2.9 million, for aiding and abetting a bank fraud. Gagnepain, too, will be ordered to pay restitution, according to his plea agreement.