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LOCAL NEWS

Mansion makeover leads to bankfraud conviction: Owner of 'Honey Fitz' home faces prison, fine

By STEVE ADAMS
The Patriot Ledger

BOSTON - A federal jury convicted a former Georgia man of giving the ''Honey Fitz'' mansion in Hull an illegal makeover.

Jamie Edelkind, 41, was found guilty of four counts of bank fraud Tuesday after a six-day trial in U.S. District Court. He faces possible prison time and a fine after his sentencing on May 24.

Prosecutors said Edelkind used a series of phony documents to get loans to buy and renovate the seaside mansion that once served as the summer playground of John Fitzgerald, the former Boston mayor and grandfather of President John F. Kennedy.

Edelkind, who filed for bankruptcy in October 1999, bought the 15-room home at 940 Nantasket Ave. in 2000 for $900,000.

Prosecutors said he filled out the mortgage application in his wife's name and claimed she was making more than $200,000 a year at Apostille, his home-based company. He used phony payroll and tax records as documentation.

In fact, Apostille was a sham company and Linda Edelkind was a full-time homemaker. The human resources director who vouched for her employment was an au pair who lived with the family.

As the home's assessed value rose during the real estate boom, Edelkind refinanced the mortgage three times for ever-larger amounts, finally for $3.3 million last year.

Edelkind also obtained three home equity loans totaling $730,000 to give the Tudor mansion a contemporary facade.

It's the second conviction for financial fraud in less than a year for Edelkind.

A federal judge in Georgia in July sentenced Edelkind to a year in prison, fined him $5,000 and ordered him to pay $221,000 in restitution to Old Republic Title Co., a California-based title insurer.

Prosecutors said Edelkind wrote more than $300,000 in counterfeit checks and took out a phony home equity loan that netted him $221,000.

While free on bail last summer, he helped his wife obtain a final refinancing for the Hull mansion, prosecutors said.

Edelkind claimed his wife was at that point making making nearly $92,000 a month at Apostille, and obtained a $3.3 million mortgage from Fairmont Funding of New York City on Aug. 25. Fairmont sold the loan on Sept. 28 to Lehman Brothers, which deposited $569,878 in cash-out refinancing proceeds into Linda Edelkind's Fleet checking account.

Over the next six weeks, Jamie Edelkind wired about $308,000 to Norway before reporting to the federal medical center at the former Fort Devens in Ayer to begin serving his sentence on the Georgia conviction Oct. 6. Linda Edelkind, a Norwegian national, moved to Norway on Oct. 18.

The government is seeking forfeiture of the house and the cash-out proceeds of the last loan, U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Samantha Martin said. The judge will determine if the properties are forfeitable at or near the time of sentencing, Martin said.

Jamie Edelkind's lawyer, Robert Sheketoff of Boston, could not be reached for comment.

Edelkind faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million on each of the four counts at his sentencing, but defendants rarely receive the maximum sentences in such cases.

Steve Adams may be reached at sadams@ledger.com .