Although there is no evidence Sean Hannity committed any crimes, he got deals on properties from a guy who later went to jail for rigging foreclosure auctions.

Further scrutiny of Sean Hannity’s real estate empire by The Guardian revealed that a shell company linked to Hannity purchased 11 homes in Georgia from one Jeff Brock who was sentenced to jail for conspiring with some buddies to rig foreclosure auctions. The Guardian explains: The men agreed not to compete on property sales so one could win the auctions with “artificially low bids”, according to charging documents. The winning bidder would then give payoffs to the others to reward them for not having competed.

As The Daily Beast noted, Hannity’s claim not to have been involved in that criminal activity is plausible. But it’s undeniable that he benefitted from it: [H]owever innocent he may be of actual wrongdoing, Hannity remains the beneficiary of a crooked scheme. Records show Hannity paid $54,000 for a house worth double that amount.

While Hannity complained on the air about the “millions more Americans suffering” foreclosures under President Barack Obama, Hannity took advantage of bargains obtained at the expense of those suffering Americans. The Daily Beast quoted from Brock’s sentencing memorandum: “For the homeowner victims, these thefts occurred at a low point in their lives. … The money that Brock and his conspirators kept for themselves could have helped the victims get back on their feet, but Brock instead enriched himself.”

All that is separate from how Hannity took advantage of HUD policies to insure mortgages without revealing how he benefitted from them when interviewing HUD secretary Ben Carson.

Again, none of that suggests that Hannity did anything illegal or maybe even unethical. But while holding himself up as a champion of the little guy, Hannity looks more and more like an unconcerned elitist.

Crossposted at News Hounds.