The sentencing of five defendants in the Equipment Finance loan fraud has been delayed until May 2012 at the request of a newly assigned assistant U.S. attorney in the case, Judy G. Smith, according to recently filed court documents.

Sentencing of Joseph M. Braas, Michael J. Schlager, John Wiley Spann, Mary C. Stankiewicz and John S. Tomberlin, originally scheduled for November, is now scheduled for May.

The trial for defendants Misty L. Kroesen and her husband Curtis A. Kroesen, former EFI employees, and Harold Young, a businessman from Alabama, originally set for October 2011, is scheduled for April 5, 2012.

Braas, Schlager, Stankiewicz, the Kroesens, from Lancaster County, PA, and Spann, Tomberlin and Young, from Alabama, were indicted with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and mail fraud, arising out of a complex loan fraud scheme that resulted in a loss of $53 million.

It is alleged in the indictment that as far back as 2001, before EFI was acquired by Sterling, the defendants were engaging in a systematic fraud at EFI. They are charged with colluding in a pervasive scheme to steal money by looting the accounts of EFI and falsifying EFI’s books from 2001 through 2007.

Previously on monitordaily: Delay Granted in EFI Fraud Trial, published September 16, 2011