Florida
Mortgage Fraud Suspect Running Teak Scam in
Costa Rica Arrested
A Lee County Florida man at the centre of a
us$3.8 million mortgage fraud scheme is in
jail. Eric Heckler, 38, of Fort Myers, was
arrested in Costa Rica on Friday.
The Lee County Sheriff's Office had a
warrant out for his arrest for his
involvement in a mortgage fraud and
racketeering scheme.
Authorities say it all started back in 2006
as a mortgage scheme out of the former AHFI
building in Fort Myers.
"They would go get the mortgage cleared by
the bank, part of that would go in their
pocket,” said Captain Dale Marshall with the
Department of Agriculture and Consumer
Services.
“People actually put in the homes were
paying them rent that went in their pockets.
And not only that, they would get a second
mortgage on the home at an inflated price;
that money went in their pockets."
Heckler is now in a San José, Costa Rica,
jail awaiting extradition back to the U.S.
He's expected in Lee County later this week.
Heckler had been living in Costa Rica for
the past year after posting a bond out of
Lee County jail the day after Christmas 2007
and failed to appear at a May 2008 court
hearing, because he was in Costa Rica
John Moritz, a Texas-based private
investigator found Heckler.
Moritz, is a retired undercover investigator
with the Texas comptroller’s office, owns a
home in Costa Rica, in addition to his
Houston home. Moritz said a friend asked him
to look into Eric Heckler, an American
living in Costa Rica who had started to draw
attention as a businessman seeking investors
in a teak wood plantation he claimed to own.
Heckler made no efforts to conceal his
identity, Moritz said.
“He was taking those people down there to
the Panamanian border and showing them the
teak site and telling them he owned it and
controlled it but didn’t have the money to
harvest it,” Moritz said.
Something about that story did not sit right
with Moritz’s friend.
On July 19, three days before Heckler’s
birthday, Moritz said he met with the friend
at a bar in Flamingo, Costa Rica, which
Heckler frequented. He said he took a cell
phone photo of Heckler and wrote his name on
a napkin, promising to look into his
background when he returned to Texas.
All it took was a simple Google search,
which returned a wealth of press releases
and stories about Heckler’s alleged
involvement in the mortgage fraud scheme. He
contacted the Miami bail bond company,
Braswell Surety Services, that paid
Heckler’s $100,000 bond and offered to
organize Heckler’s extradition.
Moritz said Heckler entered Costa Rica
legally a year ago.
With help from the U.S. Embassy in San Jose,
Costa Rica, Moritz applied for a provisional
warrant, which was required to extradite
Heckler.
“We got it in a week and he’s already in
custody,” Moritz said. “He was picked up at
4:30 p.m., Friday in a suburb of San Jose.”
Moritz said Heckler had run out of money and
was staying with friends in Costa Rica while
he got his next scam off the ground. He said
he talked to one Florida investigator with
the Department of Agriculture and Customer
Services who said he believed Heckler was
receiving financial help from an uncle in
Miami.
“As long as somebody is a crook on the lam,
and somebody is assisting them,” Moritz
said, “they can stay a crook forever.”
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Eric Heckler |
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