A U-S District Court Judge has sentenced a woman from Page County to nearly one and one-half years in prison for Mortgage Fraud. 34-year old Mandy Lea Whipple (formerly Mandy Lea Johnson), received her 18 month sentence last Friday, from Judge Stephanie Rose. The Judge also ordered Whipple to serve five years of Supervised Release.

On June 9th, Whipple entered a guilty plea to the charge of Mortgage Fraud, for falsifying mortgage loan papers to purchase a house in Fremont County. The investigation began with a report of delinquent payments on the purchased Fremont County residence, leading to the discovery that Whipple had falsely obtained a Veteran Administration’s loan to purchase the home, using the name and identifiers of a military veteran that employed her.

As part of the sentence, the Court ordered Whipple to make restitution to the Veteran’s Administration in the amount of $41,675, to J.G. Wentworth Mortgage Home Lending, LLC, in the amount of $28,904.27, and to Discover Financial Services in the amount of $5,780.04.

The investigation was conducted by the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office, Fremont County Attorney’s Office, Department of Veteran Affairs-Office of Inspector General, and prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.