Michael Eisenga, Loan Fraud, Wisconsin 2021

A former mayor of Columbus, Wisconsin has been sentenced to 42 months in federal prison for loan fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney's office for the Western District of Wisconsin.

Michael Eisenga, 49, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge William M. Conley on March 25, 2021, after pleading guilty to the charge. He was also ordered to pay restitution of approximately $4,000,000.

Eisenga, who owned several businesses including CCC Lot 2, LLC, a Wisconsin company based in Columbus, sought and obtained a $6.9 million commercial mortgage from a credit union in Illinois. He convinced the credit union to issue the loan by representing that he had already secured Festival Foods Inc. as a tenant for the property through a 20-year lease agreement and that another company, Supervalue Holdings Inc., had guaranteed the lease.

However, after Eisenga defaulted on the loan, the credit union discovered that the signatories on the purported lease and lease guarantee that Eisenga gave to the credit union never signed the documents nor did their respective companies enter into any such agreements with Eisenga. The documents were wholly fraudulent and no such lease or lease guarantee ever existed.

The charge against Eisenga was the result of an investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The U.S. Trustee's Office for the Western District of Wisconsin also provided assistance in the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Meredith P. Duchemin handled the prosecution of the case. Eisenga was ordered to begin serving his sentence in July.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwi/pr/former-mayor-columbus-sentenced-loan-fraud