Former owner of Streets of Woodfield gets 3 years for fraud

A Chicago real estate developer was sentenced to three years in prison Monday for his connection to a fraud scheme tied to a $105 million line of credit secured through Chicago and suburban properties that included the Streets of Woodfield shopping center in Schaumburg.

Laurance H. Freed, 54, the president of Joseph Freed & Associates LLC, was convicted last year on three counts of bank fraud, one count of mail fraud and four counts of making a false statement to a financial institution, according to the U.S. attorney's office for the Northern District of Illinois.

The allegations against Freed involve actions that occurred from 2002 to 2010. Dallas-based Cypress Equities bought Streets of Woodfield from Joseph Freed & Associates in 2012 for $118 million. Today, Chicago-based Shopcore Properties is listed as the owner of Streets of Woodfield.

Freed's scheme also involved the theft of millions of dollars from his business partner, Kimco Realty Corp. He also fraudulently obtained more than $575,000 in publicly funded loans from the city of Chicago and attempted to fraudulently obtain another $1 million from the city.

As part of the sentence, U.S. District Judge Robert M. Dow fined Freed $250,000 and ordered him to pay $575,759 in restitution to a victim bank.