BANGOR —  A New York man who admitted to fraudulently applying for a mortgage to buy a house he used for an illegal cannabis growing operation was spared prison time Wednesday.

Ken Yiu, 49, of Brooklyn, was sentenced to time served in prison — one day — and three years of supervised release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Maine said in a statement.

U.S. District Judge Stacey D. Neumann handed down the sentence during a hearing at the federal court in Bangor.

Yiu pleaded guilty in December 2025 to one count of mortgage fraud and one count of maintaining a marijuana-involved premises. In exchange, prosecutors dismissed one count of bank fraud, court records show. 

An emailed message to Yiu’s attorney, Ronald W. Bourget of the Augusta law firm Bourget & Banda, was not returned Wednesday morning.

A grand jury indicted Yiu in February 2025, court records show. Authorities arrested him in Queens, New York, the next month and he was released from custody on a $20,000 bond and ordered to stay in New York except for court proceedings in Maine.

According to federal prosecutors, Yiu applied in July 2020 for an $80,000, 25-year fixed-rate mortgage to purchase a property in St. Albans. He indicated the property was going to be his primary residence.

Instead, federal prosecutors wrote in court filings, Yiu used the property to house a large-scale cannabis cultivation operation. Yiu never intended to live at the St. Albans property, prosecutors said.

Real estate records at the Somerset County Registry of Deeds show the home, purchased in August 2020, is at 294 Hartland Road.

Court records only identify the victim bank as “Maine bank 1.” But filings at the Registry of Deeds indicate Kennebec Savings Bank issued Yiu the mortgage.

Yiu sold the property earlier this month, on Sept. 2, to De Xing Li, of Brooklyn, New York, records show. The mortgage was discharged Sept. 4.

Prosecutors were not seeking restitution in the case because Yiu had sold the property and satisfied the debt before sentencing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alisa Ross wrote in a court filing earlier this month.

From September 2020 to January 2024, Yiu used the property to manufacture and distribute marijuana, prosecutors said. 

On Dec. 13, 2024, federal agents interviewed Yiu in Brooklyn, according to prosecutors. Yiu admitted to “growing weed” at the St. Albans property until January 2024. He told the agents he sold the marijuana to buyers in Massachusetts.

Federal agents executed a search warrant at the property Jan. 8, 2025, and confirmed it was being used to grow and distribute marijuana, prosecutors said.

Neither Yiu nor the property was licensed through the Maine Office of Cannabis Policy.

Yiu’s case was one of a handful that made its way to federal court amid a crackdown on illegal cannabis grow houses in rural Maine, in 2024 and 2025. Many of the raids were in Somerset County.

Many busts at the rural properties resulted in arrests of people of Asian descent. Federal prosecutors in Maine have pointed to a possible link between Chinese criminal organizations and the grow houses, which they estimated totaled at least 100.

The Maine Office of Cannabis Policy confirmed in late 2024 that more than 120 previously illicit grows had entered the state’s licensed medical caregiver program.