What Was Boruch Drillman’s Sentence For Mortgage Fraud?

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Boruch Drillman on Monday was sentenced to five years of probation for his role in a $165 million mortgage fraud scheme.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Kirsch cited Drillman’s early cooperation with investigators, his genuine remorse, the fact he considered Drillman to be less culpable than other defendants in the case and Drillman’s poor health as reasons for downgrading the sentence.

The charge originally carried a maximum five-year prison sentence. Drillman was also fined $250,000.

Drillman and his co-conspirators were accused of providing lenders with bogus sales prices for a property in Troy, Michigan, and another in Cincinnati, Ohio, to secure larger loans than they would have otherwise received.

Before his sentencing, Drillman apologized to his family, to investigators and to the financial institutions harmed in the case, including JPMorgan, JLL and Fannie Mae. He became increasingly emotional.

“There are no words sufficient to express how sorry I am,” he said, speaking to his family in the court. “Your love is the only thing that kept me from losing hope.”

In one case, Drillman, along with Moshe Silber and Fred Schulman, purchased an apartment complex in Cincinnati, known as the Williamsburg of Cincinnati, for $70 million in 2019. They then used a stolen identity to present a lender and Fannie Mae with a fraudulent sales contract, showing the sales price to be more than $95 million, according to prosecutors. They then held two closings, one for the real price and one for the inflated one. The fake sales price allowed the trio to secure a $74 million loan.

The other fraudulent flip involved Troy Technology Park, an office complex in Troy, Michigan. Drillman, Aron Puretz and his son, Eli Puretz, acquired the property for $42.7 million in 2020. They provided the lender, JP Morgan, with a $70 million price tag, which was used to obtain a larger loan of $45 million. A Lakewood, New Jersey-based title insurer, Riverside Abstract, handled closings for both the real price of the property and the inflated one.

Drillman was the last to be sentenced in this scheme. Kirsch gave the maximum to co-conspirator Aron Puretz, but was more lenient with Eli Puretz, who was sentenced to 24 months in prison. He gave Silber 30 months and Schulman one year.

During Monday’s hearing, Kirsch repeatedly said that he considered the elder Puretz the most culpable in the scheme.

Though the last to be sentenced, Drillman was the first to plead guilty. He pleaded guilty in 2023 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud affecting a financial institution.

Prosecutors agreed that Drillman provided “robust, helpful and timely” information about the schemes, without receiving any kind of deal to reduce his potential sentence. Critically, he provided a recording of Eli Puretz detailing their respective roles in the fraud.

He has faced other legal issues. In Miami, he was hit with a $2.1 million judgement for allegedly failing to pay a $1.5 million loan to investor Arie Harel. The board of his Bal Harbor condominium also tried to evict him for chain-smoking cigarettes.

The case against Drillman and the others was part of a broader crackdown against commercial mortgage fraud by the Department of Justice and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Other schemes played out in a similar fashion: Owners “flipped” a property to an entity they controlled or to a co-conspirator, at an inflated price in order to get a larger loan. The arrangement hides how much money the buyers actually have on hand, and allows them to acquire properties while investing little to no equity.