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former paramilitary leader convicted of human rights abuses in Haiti was convicted Friday of mortgage fraud in Brooklyn.

Emmanuel (Toto) Constant, 51, faces 5-to-15 years in prison in New York before being sent back to Haiti to serve a life sentence.

"He came here and lived a whole new life but it was just as fraudulent as the one he lived in Haiti," Deputy Attorney General Thomas Schellhammer said after a Constant was convicted of six counts of grand larceny and mortgage fraud.

Justice Abraham Gerges will decide if Constant's Haiti conviction should be considered when he is sentenced for using straw buyers in three Brooklyn property sales.

The one-time head of the paramilitary group known as FRAPH who was convicted and sentenced in absentia in Haiti in 2000, emigrated to the U.S. in the 1990s and went to real estate school.

Constant was arrested with 40 others in a mortgage scam in 2006, but a plea deal was nixed once his human rights abuses became public.

Many prosecution witnesses in the three-week-long trial - investors, appraisers, title company employees, brokers and loan officials - were involved in the mortgage scam.

"For a long time banks have looked the other way," Schellhammer said. "Anyone who picked up the newspaper in the last year can see what has happened to the industry because of this."

Constant has insisted that others broke the law - much as he has insisted others did the killings in Haiti - and believes he should have been allowed to take the plea deal, his lawyer said.

"The trial proved there is rampant fraud in the mortgage industry," defense lawyer Samuel Karliner said. "His role was minor."

Human rights observers applauded the jury's quick verdict and said Constant should be sent back to Haiti.

"Today's conviction showed Constant to be the crook that he is," Jennie Green of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "His victims hope that he will soon be brought to justice for his crimes in Haiti that included the murder and rape and torture of thousands more."