Jury in third day of deliberations in Hennepin County mortgage fraud case

Jury deliberating mortgage fraud case against Minneapolis woman. Her alleged partner will go on trial next year.

By ROCHELLE OLSON, Star Tribune

Last update: October 2, 2008 - 5:09 PM

A Hennepin County District Court jury ended its third day of deliberations today in the mortgage fraud case against Susan E. Newell without reaching a verdict.

The jury resumes deliberations Friday morning.

Newell and Edward L. Boler, both of Minneapolis, were charged together a year ago with a dozen counts of theft by swindle and one of racketeering.

The two were on track to be tried together until Boler's lawyer, Peter Wold, successfully asked Judge Lloyd Zimmerman for separate trials because of antagonistic defense strategies.

Newell's lawyer, Gary Bryant-Wolf, argued in his closing on Tuesday that his client was doing her job as a real estate agent and had no criminal intent behind her actions. Boler, apparently, intends to blame Newell when he goes to trial next year. "Everything she did was out in the open. Everything she did was in black and white. That's not what criminals do," Bryant-Wold said.

The jury started deliberations late Tuesday, continued all day Wednesday and Thursday.

The case grew out of an arson finding by county investigator Glen Miller after a house burned in January in Brooklyn Center. Miller found that the property was one of six in foreclosure and one of seven that had been purchased in a short time by Brian White.

That led investigators to Demetrius Winston, who bought five properties in a two-week period. Prosecutors say that Newell recruited the buyers and that Boler obtained mortgage loans based on fraudulent applications. Newell, Boler and each buyer split the proceeds resulting from obtaining a mortgage greater than the property's cost, according to a complaint.

Prosecutors charge that Boler and his U.S. Mortgage Investments Richfield fraudulently obtained loans totaling $2.8 million on 12 properties, eight of them in Minneapolis and one each in Richfield, St. Paul, Champlin and Brooklyn Center.

According to the criminal complaint, Winston was working as a nursing assistant for a base pay of $25,000 a year, but loan applications listed his pay as $60,000 or more. It said that White's income also was overstated, and that he falsely represented that he would be the owner-applicant of all seven properties.

Rochelle Olson • 612-673-1747

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