Mickey Allen Weicksel, a former Lancaster real estate investor who obtained about $4 million in kickbacks through a real estate scam, was sentenced Tuesday to 14 years in prison.

Federal District Judge Barclay Surrick in Philadelphia also sentenced Weicksel, 40, to serve five years probation after his release from prison and ordered him to pay $750,324 in restitution.

Weicksel was convicted in March 2006 of 14 counts of wire fraud, three counts of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Weicksel will join his former business partner, Barrylee Paul Beers, in federal prison.

Beers, who previously pleaded guilty to wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, is serving a four-year prison term.

According to the U.S. Attorney's office, between June 1997 and September 1998, Weicksel and Beers ran a business in Lancaster County called Paul-Allen Enterprises, or PAE, which secured loans to buy houses by giving false information to banks and mortgage companies.

The business misrepresented the true sale price of the purchased houses and had the sellers give a substantial portion of the sale price back to Weicksel and Beers.

The kickbacks they received from sellers were funneled into what prosecutors said was a bogus repair company named PRC.

Beers and Weicksel, operating as PAE, purchased more than 100 properties in the Lancaster area.

At the settlements, they would attribute the added costs to repairs they had made to the property, "when in fact no significant work had ever been done," prosecutors said.

The case was investigated by agents of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

It was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily McKillip.

Skip Bedics, an agent with the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS, said Weicksel's sentence shows how judges have become intolerant of crimes committed by finance professionals.

"I think the court is sending a message that they're not going to tolerate this type of behavior by (mortgage and real estate) professionals," Bedics said.

Dozens of Lancaster County residents who sold property to Weicksel and Beers found themselves in 1999 holding second mortgages and tens of thousands of dollars in additional debt when Weicksel's firm filed for bankruptcy.

During bankruptcy proceedings in 1999, Weicksel testified he did not know what happened to the more than $4 million that flowed from PAE's coffers to PRC.

E-mail: pburns@lnpnews.com