Michelle Marie Miska was sentenced Thursday to three years in prison for devising a mortgage fraud scheme that bilked nearly $700,000 total from three different lenders for her Oak Grove home.

Her husband, Robert Gordon Bock Jr., was sentenced only to 10 months in a halfway house for his part in the scheme.

Why such a difference? Miska used some of the proceeds from the mortgage fraud to pay restitution stemming from her federal embezzlement conviction nearly eight years ago.

U.S. District Judge Joan Ericksen had little sympathy for Miska, who sobbed openly as she received her sentence. Miska, who has four children, including one who is beginning cancer treatment, pleaded for a sentence that would take her children into account.

Ericksen pointed out that Miska received a break when she was sentenced in November 2001 for embezzling nearly $500,000 from her employer, American Express. At the time, she was sentenced to six months in federal prison and ordered to pay more than $65,000 in restitution.

"It should come as no surprise that I am not of the belief that giving you a break again is in the best interests of justice," Ericksen said.

She was willing to cut Bock more of a break, she said, because he was not the scheme's ringleader. He was, however, not entirely faultless. When more than $600,000 in mortgage proceeds showed up in Bock's bank account, he used the money to buy antique cars and Minnesota Vikings season tickets. Bock told the court that he is a former probation officer and should have known better.

In Miska's scheme at American Express, she used the money to pay off credit card debt and buy a car and snowmobile and other luxury items.

The mortgage scheme involved the purchase and repeated refinancing of the couple's Oak Grove home, which included fraudulently showing a previous mortgage had been satisfied. Bock's brother was recruited as a straw buyer of their home as part of the scheme.

James Walsh • 612-673-7428