A Lake Jackson attorney has pleaded guilty to bank fraud for his role in a scheme in which he allegedly sold 10 beach houses along the Texas Gulf Coast to straw buyers at double or triple their appraised value, and then paid generous kickbacks to his co-conspirators.

Kirk Lawrence Brannan, 64, admitted to conspiring with three co-defendants from 2005 to 2009 to execute a scheme that prosecutors allege defrauded Wells Fargo Bank and other lenders out of $5.3 million. Brannan then paid $2.4 million of that money to co-conspirators who recruited straw buyers for the beach houses who never intended to live in the residences or pay the mortgages, prosecutors charged.