California Real Estate Fraud Report

A man Contra Costa prosecutor Ken McCormick has referred to as a “national expert” in real estate has been charged by the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office of ripping off a New York family of over $1 million.

The man, Ken Beasley, 67, is also a resident of New York but but the three felonies with which he has been charged occurred in Danville. Beasley was charged with two felony counts of embezzlement and one enhanced charge accusing him of causing excessive loss.

The New York family gave Beasley, who has published four books about real estate and who has appeared on Fox News Channel as a real estate “guru,” $1,140 million back in 2006 to purchase three investment properties in Las Vegas, Nevada. According to prosecutors, Beasley did not purchase the properties (real estate investment fraud) but gave the victim fraudulent documents  (title fraud) and sent him monthly rental payments to keep the fraud going. The scam was only discovered when several years later, the family attorney did a title search on the properties while setting up a will and saw they were not in the name of his client.

Read the original article in the Silicon Valley Mercury News.

Update: Ken Beasley is quoted in a subsequent article in the Silcon Valley Mercury News as denying the charges.

The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office filed 36 felony counts against Anna Moskovyan related to real estate fraud on March 31.

In the complaint, Moskovyan, 30, is accused of forging signatures on grant deeds  (title fraud) to illegally establish ownership of homes she had identified as having tax liens against them by the L.A. County Treasurer and Tax Collector’s Office. In order to receive the excess proceeds from when the properties were auctioned (foreclosed),  Moskovyan then filed claims with the tax agency.

Moskovyan is also accused of two other schemes. The first is that she allegedly recorded fraudulent Mechanic’s Liens against properties which were about to be foreclosed on. Financial institutions then paid her to remove “her” liens so that the properties could be sold.

The last scheme alleged is that Moskovyan transferred two properties to herself by filing fraudulent grant deeds (title fraud).

Read the original article by the L.A. County Department of Consumer Affairs and the Press Advisory from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Note: per the North Hollywood – Toluca Lake Patch, Anna Moskovyan remains in jail in lieu of a $1.24 million bail. The 100 or more properties on which she allegedly recorded fraudulent mechanic’s liens are located in North Hollywood, Valley Village, Altadena, Canoga Park, Canyon Country, Cerritos, Diamond Bar, Downey, Hacienda Heights, La Canada, La Mirada, La Puente, Lakewood, North Hills, Northridge, Monterey Park, and Valencia.

One of the principal defendants in the real estate fraud that almost cost a woman her multi-million dollar condominium in San Francisco, is going to to prison for a long time, thanks to the jury that convicted him and the judge who pronounced his sentence.

Jay Shah, 48, was convicted last September of more than a dozen felony charges, along with former tennis instructor Winston Lum. They and others attempted to steal the luxury condo belonging to Shirley Hwang located at One Rincon Hill. Hwang herself discovered the scam when she was mistakenly sent title and other documents sent to her other address and alerted authorities immediately.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Charlene Kiesselbach prounounced a sentence of 20 years on Jay Shah and further ordered him to pay $14.1 million – double the amount purportedly stolen.

San Francisco prosecutors, including Assistant District Attorney Sandip Patel, said Shah and Lum conspired with others to create fraudulent real estate documents (title fraud) in order to transfer expensive properties in the names of co-conspirators. They would then drain all of the equity from the properties by taking out loans (loan fraud, mortgage fraud) and deposit it through their shell companies (money laundering).

Another of the co-defendants in this case was Kaushal Niroula, who was convicted in this scam as well as the murder of Clifford Lambert. Both he and defrocked attorney David Replogle are serving life sentences for that crime, after both were convicted.

Read the original article in KTVU.com and the San Francisco Examiner.

There are also many postings on the California Real Estate Fraud Report about the inception of this crime as well as the trials of David Replogle and Kaushal Niroula, which you can locate by using the search tool on the left side of the page.

A somewhat controversial proposal to increase fees on property transactions in Riverside that are used to fund real estate fraud investigations was passed after a compromise.

The new few is going to be $6 beginning March 5.

Both the Riverside District Attorney’s Office and the Assessor-Clerk-Recorder pushed for the increase. On the District Attorney Paul Zellerbach argued for the increase due to the continuing volume of complaints of real estate fraud and mortgage fraud in his jurisdiction.

Part of the fee currently goes to the Assessor’s office to help defray its costs for mailing out noticed to property owners when transactions are made concerning their properties. There have been numerous frauds committed when property documents are fabricated and/or forged in order to defraud the lawful owner from his/her property, almost always without the owner’s knowledge (title fraud).

Read the original article in UT San Diego.

A Concord man is the 26th person who has admitted he participated in a Bay Area bid rigging at public auctions for foreclosing homes.

Norman Montalvo is a real estate investor who has agreed to plead guilty to a conspiracy to rig bidding; he was originally charged with four felonies. The charges included using the mail to “fraudulently acquire title to properties sold at auctions, to send and receive payoffs, and to send money to co-conspirators.”

Montalvo will be fined depending on what the court determines his illegal profits were and up to 30 years in prison – the time it normally takes to pay off a 30-year mortgage.

The case was investigated by the FBI and is being tried in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Read the original article in the Mercury News and the Imperial Valley News.

Jay Shah, 48, who was convicted of stealing three luxury condominiums in San Francisco’s One Rincon Hill tower, was arrested in Watsonville at a Days Inn motel.

After his conviction in September on over a dozen felony counts, including grand theft, Shah fled.

Shah and his co-conspirators Melvin Emerich (Shah’s attorney), Winston Lum, and Kaushal Niroula played various roles in order to fool real estate agents and steal the properties (title fraud) from their owner Shirley Hwang. They then duped lenders into extending them a $2.2 million equity loan (loan fraud, mortgage fraud), which they divided among themselves.

Hwang alerted authorities when mail to one of the defendants was sent to her address and has since recovered title. All three of the condos are worth in excess of $6 million.

Kaushal Niroula was recently convicted in Riverside County for conspiring along with attorney David Replogle, Daniel Carlos Garcia and Miguel Bustamante for murdering Palm Springs retiree Clifford Lambert and stealing title to Lambert’s home and art work and looting his bank accounts. Craig McCarthy pleaded guilty in 2010 to voluntary manslaughter and turned state’s evidence on his former friends; he is awaiting sentencing this month. Art dealer Russell Manning pleaded guilty to fraud related to the theft of the art and received a five-year prison sentence.

Read the original article in the Silicon Valley Mercury News. More details of Jay Shah’s crimes can be found in this article in SFGate and KESQ.com and there are numerous postings on the California Real Estate Fraud Report about the Lambert murder and David Replogle.

Kaushal Niroula, 31, and Daniel Carlos Garcia, 30, who have both been the subject of multiple postings on the California Real Estate Fraud Report, are awaiting the jury’s verdict in a trial located in Indio for which both have been charged with murder and conspiracy, as well as other felony counts. Both men are representing themselves.

Attorney David Replogle was already convicted in January and sentenced to life in prison this past May in this case, which centers around the murder of 74-year old Palm Springs retiree Clifford Lambert. Miguel Bustamante was convicted along with Replogle and received the same prison sentence. Craig McCarthy, Bustamante’s roommate, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and will be sentenced next month. Art dealer Russell Manning pleaded guilty to fraud-related charges in the theft of Lambert’s art work and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Deputy District Attorney Lisa DiMaria said Daniel Garcia met Clifford Lambert online. He eventually sent Kaushal Niroula Lambert’s address and phone number. Soon thereafter, Replogle and Niroula flew together to Burbank airport from San Francisco, from which they then drove to Lambert’s home in Palm Springs on Dec. 1, 2008. Niroula falsely represented to Lambert that he was an attorney working for a family in New York that had left Lambert money or artwork in a will.

Four days later, while Niroula was at the house, he let McCarthy and Bustamante inside. According to McCarthy, Bustamante stabbed Lambert to death while McCarthy held him. They buried him in the desert (Lambert’s body has never been found), then stole his car and debit car and made use of both.

DiMaria alleged that on Dec. 10, Niroula opened a Wells Fargo bank account in David Replogle’s name. On Dec. 11, Replogle, pretending he was Lambert, went to art dealer Manning and gave him power of attorney over all Lambert’s accounts. Manning and Lambert then transferred $185,000 from the dead man’s Palm Springs bank account to Replogle’s new Wells Fargo account.

The following day, Replogle and Niroula went to see a notary and Replogle forged four power of attorney documents (title fraud, real estate fraud). Replogle and Manning then cleaned out the remainder of Lambert’s monies from his bank accounts.

Read the original article in Estate of Denial.

In another case related to the David Replogle murder trial:

A jury has found Jay Shah, a telecommunications executive,  guilty on all 13 felony counts having to do with conspiring to steal three Rincon Hill exclusive condos. Prosecutrs had charged Shah forged grant deeds (title fraud) transferring the condos, owned by Shirley Hwang, to a storefront/bogus corporation, from he then took out loans.

For her part, Shirley Hwang is relieved. “The verdict speaks for itself and justice prevailed and I can move on with my life,” she said following the trial verdicts.

Tennis instructor Winston Lum was adjudged guilty of six counts including forgery, filing false deeds (title fraud), grand theft and attempted grand theft. He was found not guilty of filing false documents. Melvin Emerich, a real estate broker and attorney, was acquitted of charges of filing false grant deeds.

Read the original article in KGO-TV.

Update: SFGate reported on September 20 that Judge Charlene Padovani Kiesselbach had issued an arrest warrant for Jay Shah and forfeited his $1 million bail because he did not appear in court on the day guilty verdicts were entered against him and several of the other defendants.

In a novel and very creative form of real estate fraud, a woman out on bail for felony charges who was wearing an electronic monitoring anklet was arrested a second time on charges of elder theft, forgery of deed documents, recording false instruments and grand theft.

Mai Vu, 53, was arraigned today after a Campbell police investigator traced her following a report by an elderly couple that somebody had forged real estate documents (probably a grant deed) that transferred title out of their names (title fraud). In the meantime, investigators with a different agency – the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office - found an elderly Milpitas couple had also had their property transferred to Vu. She defrauded an investor out of $250,000 (loan fraud) when she used the Milpitas home as collateral in order to secure the loan, then transferred title back to the lawful owners (title fraud).

Mai Vu’s first run-in with the law occurred in August 2011, when she was charged with defrauding four victims and had her bail set at $10 million.

Investigators may be reached at 408-808-3787.

Read the original article in the Mercury News.

The San Bernardino District Attorney’s Office has announced that David Alan Boucher, 56, of Upland, has been arrested and charged with 63 felony counts, including  filing false documents, forgery and identity theft. Prosecutors accuse Boucher of defrauding banks and other financial firms by recording fraudulent grant deeds (title fraud) on 20 properties located in San Bernardino County.

District Attorney Michael Ramos said that Boucher held himself out as the “authorized representative” of the banks that regained title to the foreclosed properties, which had a combined value of $4.5 million. After the grant deeds were forged, hard money loans were obtained on some of the homes, defrauding those lenders (loan fraud).

Read the original article in the Press Enterprise.