Sober home manager sentenced to 30 months in prison for wire fraud and mortgage fraud schemes

Date: Jan. 23, 2026

Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov

BOSTON – A manager of numerous sober homes in Massachusetts was sentenced yesterday in federal court in Boston for his involvement in three different fraud schemes involving sober homes in the Greater Boston area, the Mass Save Program and a mortgage lender.

Nicholas Espinosa, formerly of Randolph, was sentenced by U.S. Senior District Court Judge William G. Young to 30 months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release. In October 2024, Espinosa pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud conspiracy; one count of conspiracy to make false statements to a mortgage lending business (mortgage fraud conspiracy); 15 counts of wire fraud; six counts of unlawful monetary transactions (money laundering); and one count of making false statements to a mortgage lending business. Espinosa was arrested and charged in March 2023 along with co-conspirator Daniel Cleggett.

Cleggett was the founder of the sober home business A Vision From God LLC (AVFG). Established in November 2016, AVFG owned and operated sober homes in Boston, Wakefield, Quincy and Weymouth under trade names including Brady’s Place, Lakeshore Retreat and Lambert House. Espinosa managed the day-to-day affairs of Cleggett’s sober home business.

Cleggett, Espinosa and a sober home client entered into a conspiracy to defraud a New York-based family trust that was paying for the client’s room and board at Brady’s Place, located in Quincy. Specifically, Cleggett and Espinosa overcharged the family trust for room and board by up to $12,500 per month by submitting false and fraudulent invoices to the family trust. Cleggett and Espinosa would then issue “refund” checks to the client in furtherance of the fraud scheme.

From approximately October 2019 to December 2021, Cleggett personally, and through straw purchasers including Espinosa, purchased three residential properties in Weymouth and Boston to use as sober homes. Cleggett, Espinosa and others submitted false information and fraudulent documentation including falsely representing that the three properties were intended to be purchased as primary residences when, in reality, each was intended to be a sober home.

United States Attorney Leah B. Foley; Thomas Demeo, Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation, Boston Field Office; and Ted E. Docks, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division made the announcement. Valuable assistance was provided by the Kingston, Randolph and Quincy Police Departments. Assistant U.S. Attorneys and John T. Mulcahy and Dustin Chao of the Public Corruption & Special Prosecutions Unit are prosecuting the case.

IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) is the law enforcement arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 19 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.