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Man Indicted In Mortgage Scam Seeks OK To Travel

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By MICHAEL BRAGA

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: August 29, 2008

SARASOTA - Michael Tringali, indicted in July along with former partner Neil Mohamed Husani and two other men on federal charges that they orchestrated an $82.8 million scheme to defraud seven banks on Florida's west coast, is seeking a federal judge's permission to travel to Atlanta as needed for business.

Since being indicted, Tringali's travel has been restricted to Florida, but the businessman's attorney said in a federal court filing Thursday that Tringali recently has been offered two construction jobs in Atlanta.

One is the "build out" of a restaurant in the city and another is to build a boat storage operation on Lake Lanier, northeast of Atlanta, according to the motion.

In the motion, Tringali's attorney, Todd Foster of Tampa, said Tringali would live with his brother while working in the Atlanta area and would check in with a pre-trial services officer before leaving.

The U.S. Attorney's Office has no objection to the expanded travel permission, Foster said in the filing.

Tringali and his partners' indictments came as federal officials have been cracking down on fraud committed during the unprecedented real estate boom. Federal investigations have targeted 400 defendants.

The criminal investigation was launched after the Herald-Tribune ran a series of articles describing the partners' multimillion-dollar real estate deals and the fact that they appeared to overstate the value of several purchases in documents used to get bank loans.

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