Chicago judge going to jail for $1.4 million fraud

Jessica Arong O'Brien, 51, came to this country from the Philippines. She had no education and was as poor as a pauper, but she saw the American dream and made the most of it.

She earned degrees in culinary arts and restaurant management. She later went to John Marshall Law School, graduating in 1998 to eventually become the first Filipina judge in Cook County, and then become the first Filipina judge to go to prison for fraud.

On Thursday, O'Brien was sentenced to a year in prison for being found guilty to participating in a $1.4 million mortgage fraud scheme a little over ten years ago.

O'Brien broke down into tears after the judge sentencing her to the slammer following her February conviction of two counts alleging she took part in a scheme in which several mortgage lenders were scammed, the Chicago Tribune reported.

She was convicted of lying to lenders to obtain more than $1.4 million in mortgages on two investment properties that she sold while she owned a real estate company.

The now former judge reportedly made money by selling the two homes in 2007 after paying kickbacks to a straw purchaser. 

[A straw purchaser is someone who covertly buys the item(s) for you in much the same way Eric Holder used straw purchasers to buy guns for a Mexican drug cartel by which a border agent named Brian Terry was murdered by one of the guns. Fortunately for Holder, he was former President Obama's "Wingman" so he wasn't prosecuted for his crime, but should have been.]  

Personally, O'Brien made a profit of at least $325,000 from the sales, prosecutors said, but the lenders lost money as the straw purchaser defaulted on payments and properties were foreclosed.

Prior the sentencing, O’Brien said she was “an embarrassment” and said the scheme was a mistake. “Of course, I have remorse as to my stupidity,” O’Brien said, unlike Eric Holder. 

Her greatest remorse, however, is that she got caught because she thought everyone else was stupid.

Her lawyer Steve Greenberg argued for probation, pointing to her true American dream story, where a Filipina immigrant, who came to the U.S. without anything, educated herself and became a judge . . . was successful, got greedy, got caught and off she goes.

I'm sure there are plenty of people with "true American dream" stories, but they don't commit crimes, especially a crime based solely on greed--the judge wasn't poor and didn't need to commit fraud.

“It is an inspirational story,” Greenberg said. “She has fallen as far as she can fall. She has lost everything. … There is absolutely no reason to send this poor lady to jail.”

Except for that little crimey thingy we call fraud.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin denied the request for probation, arguing that her fraud scheme wasn’t just a mistake but a rather elaborate fraudulent scheme.

“This wasn’t stupid,” Durkin said, according to the newspaper. “This was a crime… You really didn’t need to do this.”

Prosecutors, meanwhile, used O’Brien’s story to push for a harsher sentence, saying that she committed fraud despite not having the financial needs to do it.

After sentencing, O’Brien blamed family issues that prompted her to get into real estate business and reiterated that she acted foolishly. 

So instead of keeping it simple and only blaming herself and not her "family issues," she showed her true inner self.

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