A Brooklyn federal judge in a strongly worded opinion entered a $4.5 million judgment against a Staten Island builder, finding that he engaged in deception to obtain massive loans.

U.S. Senior District Judge Nina Gershon found that the builder, Robert DeLuca, was responsible for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud and fraudulent inducement, and that his wife Kimberly DeLuca was liable for aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty against her uncle, Peter Uddo.

The DeLucas had repaid loans from Uddo in the past, but Uddo's lawyers, Joshua Wurtzel and Douglas Grover of Schlam Stone & Dolan, argued their client never would have helped the DeLucas with a much larger loan had he known of Robert DeLuca's true financial status.

In the opinion Gershon found that the couple had concealed numerous debts from Uddo in 2011, when they asked him for a $5 million loan to finance their real estate business.

Uddo didn't have the money on hand, Gershon wrote, but he agreed to post his $7 million securities portfolio as collateral to help them get a $4.5 million line of credit from Charles Schwab.

Uddo testified that he and Robert DeLuca had an oral agreement that DeLuca would pay back the principal and the interest, but in a posttrial memo, the DeLucas' lawyer, Judd Spray, argued that the collateral was posted as a no-strings-attached favor.

Gershon dismissed that argument, finding Uddo's testimony on the oral agreement valid.

Spray declined to comment on Gershon's opinion and order.

Even though, under New York's fraud statute, contracts longer than one year must be made in writing, Gershon found that DeLuca could have repaid the loan within a year instead of waiting for the five-year term of the credit line.

While Uddo had understood that the DeLucas would use the money for their business, Gershon wrote, they instead spent hundreds of thousands of dollars repaying older loans from Uddo and others.

According to the opinion, a forensic accountant, Eric Kreuter, testified that the DeLucas spent $3.5 million on personal expenses in six years, which was far more than they earned in the same period.

"That Dr. Kreuter had some difficulty determining exactly which income source paid for each expense speaks more to the deeply problematic way in which the DeLucas commingled their business and personal funds and provided conflicting reports of income and liabilities, than it does to Dr. Kreuter's skill or his ultimate opinions," Gershon wrote.

In 2016, after years of stalling, Robert DeLuca admitted he couldn't repay what he had borrowed, Gershon wrote. Uddo paid off $4.5 million in outstanding debt by selling his securities.

Gershon acknowledged that claims for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty tend to be duplicative, but in this case, she wrote, Robert DeLuca owed Uddo a fiduciary duty separate from their oral agreement.

"Here, in addition to being in a close, familial relationship with Mr. Uddo, Mr. DeLuca held himself out as an expert in the field of land acquisition and construction," Gershon wrote. "He had considerably superior knowledge and experience in that area, and he relied on that, plus his close kinship with Mr. Uddo, to induce Mr. Uddo to trust him and extend him the collateral for the Schwab line of credit."

Wurtzel released a statement praising the "extremely thorough and well-reasoned decision."