He went from a LeBron-era Heat ticket scam to a $1.7 million mortgage fraud
A prolific coast-to-coast constructor of scams and schemes — who committed grand theft involving Miami Heat tickets — has admitted using two multimillion-dollar Fort Lauderdale homes to get $1.7 million in mortgage loans.
George French Jones, 50, doesn’t own 41 Nurmi Dr. or 1525 SE 10th St., so using them as collateral to get the cash from a private mortgage lender counts as fraud. Creating fake Canadian passports to help with the fraud counts as identity theft.
Jones will be sentenced March 1 after pleading guilty Friday to one count of mail fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft.
He faces up to 22 years in prison.
During the Miami Heat’s “Big Three” era, when LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined Dwyane Wade as the Heat’s nucleus, Jones suckered some of the living-large set by selling them season tickets he didn’t own. Despite getting $200,000 from sports agent David Meltzer, Jones got only 16 months in a California state prison.
Upon release, Jones relocated to South Florida, where he resumed his activities.
Jones pleaded not guilty to mortgage fraud involving a Brickell condominium as well as trying to steal ownership on paper of a South Beach condominium. While those 2017 cases worked their way through the court system, Jones disappeared in December 2017.
He has been at Miami-Dade Corrections’ Turner-Guilford Knight Correctional Center since May 10.
During his five months on the lam, the six-foot, 270-pound Jones showed little mobility or originality. He moved his fraud into Broward County with the scheme to which he admitted in federal court.
Jones chose two properties owned by out-of-town companies: 41 Nurmi Drive, a house bought by North Carolina-based Bacon Properties in 2015 for $1.735 million, and 1525 SE 10th St., a house that California company V&H Ventures bought for $1.055 million in 2013.
Then, Jones created a fraudulent parallel paper world to sustain the life of his financial lie. He made two faux Canadian passports, one with the name of a real Bacon employee and another with the name of an actual V&H employee (B.G., likely Benjamin Gettler, V&H’s registered agent in Florida).
Jones set up an email account in Bacon’s name and another in Gettler’s name. Then, he created fake business names that resembled Bacon Properties and V&H Ventures and opened bank accounts in the fake names.
With all this and phony loan documents, private mortgage lender TCM Finance approved the mortgage loans.
V&H sold the five-bedroom, four-bathroom house at 1525 SE 10th St. on Oct. 29 to Nathan and Tammy Horton for $3.2 million.
This story was originally published December 26, 2018 at 2:50 PM.
