Builder pleads guilty to fraud

A Mount Pleasant-based home builder pleaded guilty Wednesday to defrauding a bank as part of a desperate but foiled attempt to keep a faltering real estate project afloat.

Thomas Oppold Jr. admitted to illegally diverting $500,000 he had borrowed from SunTrust Banks Inc. to an investment firm that later turned out to be a multimillion-dollar scam. He had told the federally insured financial institution that the money was to pay off a construction debt.

Oppold, 40, waived his right to an indictment and said he would continue to cooperate with prosecutors. U.S. District Court Judge P. Michael Duffy accepted the guilty plea.

According to testimony Wednesday, SunTrust extended a $7 million line of credit to Oppold to finance a housing project in Shallotte, N.C., roughly between Myrtle Beach and Wilmington. The money was to be disbursed gradually, as work was completed.

When the developer asked for one of his last scheduled advances in late 2008, an amount totaling about $590,080, his Tidewater at Ocean Isle venture had fallen on hard times as the grip of recession tightened.

Property sales had dried up, and Oppold said he was facing foreclosure and bankruptcy.

He told Duffy that he thought he had found a way to buy time and score some quick cash after being approached by James G. Ossie's CRE Capital Corp., which promised Oppold a 10 percent return in just 30 days.

Oppold wired the Atlanta-based firm $500,000 of SunTrust's money in late December 2008. Within a few weeks, the Securities and Exchange Commission swooped in and shut down CRE.

"Unfortunately, this 'investment' turned out to be a Ponzi scheme," said Prosecutor Rhett DeHart of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Charleston.

DeHart added that "very little money has been recovered" from the CRE scam.

Oppold said in court that he always planned to use the loan proceeds and the $50,000 he had hoped to make from his ill-timed investment to pay legitimate business debts and keep his troubled real estate venture going.

"That was my intent," he said. "My intent was never to take the money for my personal use."

According to court filings, Oppold was among more than 120 individuals who invested money with Ossie starting in 2008. CRE Capital had claimed it could generate high returns quickly though currency trading.

Ossie traded and lost at least $13 million, the SEC has estimated. In January 2009, he told investors that he no longer could make payments, according to a court filing.

He was sentenced to 82 months in prison last August and ordered to pay $18.7 million in restitution.

Oppold's sentencing date will be scheduled later. Released on a personal recognizance bond, he faces a maximum of 30 years in prison, a $1 million fine and five years of supervised release.

The developer might qualify for more lenient federal sentencing guidelines based on the circumstances of his case, DeHart said.