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A real estate developer was sentenced to four years in prison for a decade-long, mortgage fraud scheme that totaled $6.5 million and cost lenders nearly $4 million.

George Kritopoulos, 50, of Salem, was sentenced in Boston federal court on Friday to four years in prison followed by two years of supervised release, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office.

Kritopoulos, who had been charged in 2018 along with co-defendants Joseph Bates III and David Plunkett, was convicted in May by a federal jury on one count of conspiracy, two counts of wire fraud, six counts of bank fraud, one count of aiding the preparation of a false income tax return and one count of obstruction of justice.

According to the U.S. attorney’s statement, Kritopoulos, Bates and others engaged in a scheme between 2006 and 2015 to defraud banks and other financial institutions by causing false information to be submitted to those institutions on behalf of borrowers primarily located in Salem.

The properties involved in the scheme were usually multi-family buildings with two-to-four units, which were then converted into condominiums. Kritopoulos recruited borrowers to purchase the individual condominium units and finance them by mortgage loans obtained by fraud, according to the statement.

The false information submitted to lenders included employment, income, assets and intent to occupy the property. According to the statement, borrowers said they were employed by entities that were really shell companies used in the scheme, but the borrowers received little or no income from the entities.

Kritopoulos brought the recruited borrowers to Plunkett, who then prepared tax returns that contained false and inflated income, the statement said. Some of those tax returns were submitted to lenders as part of the loan applications.

Because the borrowers did not have the financial ability to repay the loans, they defaulted on their loan payments in all but two instances among 21 properties, the statement said, resulting in foreclosures and losses to the lenders of more than $3.8 million.

Kritopoulos also sought to obstruct the federal criminal investigation into the mortgage fraud scheme by encouraging Bates and Plunkett to make false statements and create false documents he hoped would make the companies appear to have been legitimate, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Bates pleaded guilty in October 2018 to one count of conspiracy, three counts of wire fraud affecting a financial institution and two counts of bank fraud. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 1. Plunkett, who pleaded guilty in February 2019 to one count of bank fraud and one count of aiding in the submission of false tax returns, is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 14.

The U.S. attorney’s office said the judge has reserved determination on an order of restitution for Kritopoulos.