A former New York housing counselor was sentenced to 72 months in prison and three years of supervised release for defrauding 136 clients who came to her seeking mortgage modifications.
Lori J. Macakanja, 35, of Dunkirk, New York, was also ordered to pay $298,639 in restitution. She was a housing counselor at HomeFront and inappropriately requested money from clients, telling them it would be used toward loan modifications to prevent foreclosure. But, instead, she used it on herself, according to the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.