(WTTW News)

A former employee of Cook County’s Land Bank Authority who pleaded guilty to a fraud scheme that involved buying properties from that agency in order to redevelop and sell them for his own benefit, has been sentenced to a year in federal prison.

Mustafaa Saleh, 37, was sentenced last week to a year and one day in prison after he pleaded guilty earlier this year to a charge of wire fraud.

Saleh worked as an asset manager for the Cook County Land Bank Authority, which allows for vacant, foreclosed, abandoned and tax delinquent real estate properties to be bought and redeveloped by private owners.

Federal prosecutors alleged that from 2016 to 2021, Saleh recruited people to pose as independent buyers and then had them purchase six land bank properties, located in Chicago, Oak Lawn and Midlothian, on his own behalf. Employees were prohibited from having a financial interest in property maintenance companies contracting with the agency.

After those properties were purchased, redeveloped and then sold again, Saleh allegedly had the straw buyers pay him the proceeds from the sales.

According to prosecutors, Saleh also formed a property maintenance company in 2016 called Evergreen Property Services — using another individual pose as its owner — and then caused the Land Bank Authority to contract with Evergreen and pay it more than $1 million for property maintenance services over the next three years.

Federal prosecutors had sought a 33 month sentence, arguing in a sentencing memorandum that Saleh “manipulated and abused his position of public trust in an important government organization … for his own financial benefit.”

“Defendant directly interfered with the CCLBA’s mission and deprived honest individuals of the benefits and opportunities that the CCLBA was specifically designed to provide,” prosecutors wrote in the memorandum. “Moreover, defendant’s adverse impact on the CCLBA and individuals in this community was not a mere collateral consequence of defendant’s scheme; but instead, was necessary to defendant’s scheme and intended by defendant.”