An Arlington real estate appraiser has been sentenced to five years in prison after participating in what U.S. Attorney Richard Roper called a widespread North Texas home scam that cost Countrywide Home Loans millions of dollars.

In August, Gandhi Ben Morka, 52, was found guilty on a charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, four counts of wire fraud and two counts of mail fraud after a weeklong trial.

In addition to the five-year sentence handed down Tuesday, he must repay $2.3 million.

Mr. Morka was accused of working with seven others who were indicted in May 2005 on mortgage fraud charges – Sean Cung-Kim Nguyen, Dai Quoc Nguyen, Xuyen Thi-Kim Nguyen, Tam Nguyen, Myna Tran, Hong Thanh Duong and Cuc Kim Tran. Mr. Roper's office said that most of those seven have been convicted and sentenced to prison.

Mr. Morka's trial focused on two homes, one in Plano and one in Arlington.

Under the scam, Mr. Morka would assess the home at roughly double its value in order to get more money from the mortgage company, which in these cases was Countrywide. The group would submit faked loan documents in order to get the financing, pay off the original owners of the property and split the rest, according to Mr. Roper.

In a 2006 report by the federal Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Texas ranked fourth in real estate mortgage loan fraud. Only California, Florida and Georgia had more instances of mortgage fraud than Texas.

Investigations nationwide have centered on flimsy loan documentation and deceptive lending practices. Lax lending standards and compliant appraisers have been implicated in the housing bubble and its collapse.

But a local mortgage expert said that while there were concerns about appraisals in North Texas earlier in the decade, for the most part there aren't problems with appraisals happening today.

"We haven't had the really high prices and then running down of prices in this market compared with others," said Gary Akright, an independent mortgage broker in Dallas.

The stability of home prices here makes fraud related to appraisals less likely, he said, and Texas laws prohibit any influencing of real estate appraisers by real estate agents.

As of Sept. 1, mortgage companies doing business in Texas must warn loan applicants of the criminal consequences if they provide false information on the application, including inflated appraisal values.