ielements architecture kyle grasso venice ca

The “buyers” owned the homes in name only - Fitzgerald and Abrams allegedly kept control of the properties and rented some to raise cash to help keep their scheme going. In all, they bought about 80 houses in exclusive enclaves of Southern and Northern California, often using people posing as buyers who appeared to be legitimate but were not, the government contends. They also enlisted appraisers and used their own escrow companies to fabricate settlement documents and their own notary to validate them, prosecutors say. Prosecutors say the pair recruited real estate agents, including Grasso and Babajian - whose celebrity clients have included Ryan Seacrest and Oscar De La Hoya - to find properties, negotiate sales, falsify listings and jack up the “comps,” or comparable sales figures, from other transactions in the area. Those who easily got mortgages included first-time buyers who couldn’t afford them, speculators seeking fast profits on flips and, as prosecutors now contend, fraudsters such as Fitzgerald and Abrams. As interest rates fell, lenders jumped in with anything-goes loans, some requiring no proof of borrowers’ ability to repay them. It was the beginning of an era of freewheeling lending that later helped fuel the current turmoil in U.S. Some members lost the investments he had solicited from them.įitzgerald and Abrams, the alleged ringleaders of the fraud, sprang onto the Beverly Hills real estate scene as the 1990s ended and the Westside market began to recover from a long downturn. He apologized Friday to his wife and children, and to the Mormon Church for using it as a conduit for the fraud. “I wish I could take it back and relive those years all over again and change it all, but I can’t.”īabajian, 55, Grasso, 37, and another defendant, appraiser Lila Rizk, 41, have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trials that have yet to be scheduled.Ībrams, 47, and six other defendants have pleaded guilty and will be sentenced after the remaining criminal cases play out.įitzgerald had asked to be sentenced now because he wanted to be moved from Los Angeles, where he has been held since December 2006, to a prison closer to his family, who live in Idaho and Utah. “I apologize to the court, I apologize to the government, I apologize to every victim,” he said. “I am sorry for everything that happened,” Fitzgerald, who wore a white prison jumpsuit and was shackled at the waist, told the judge as his wife and six children sat at the back of the courtroom. However, the judge noted that Fitzgerald does not have the money. Prosecutors said Fitzgerald and his alleged co-conspirators, including developer Mark Alan Abrams and star real estate agents Joseph Babajian and Kyle Grasso, hatched their scheme during California’s burgeoning real estate boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s.įitzgerald, who will serve his time at a medium-security federal prison in Colorado, was ordered to pay that amount in restitution. “This is a case about good old-fashioned lying and cheating.” “This is not a deregulation case,” he said. District Judge Dean Pregerson said Fitzgerald’s scheme had no direct connection to the current financial crisis. He is the first of 11 defendants to be sentenced in the case, which foreshadowed the wave of foreclosures now washing over the wreckage of California’s real estate market. Charles Elliott Fitzgerald, an admitted architect of one of the largest real estate frauds in California history, was sentenced Friday to 14 years in federal prison for his part in bilking mortgage lenders of more than $40 million.įitzgerald, 48, pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy, fraud and other charges, acknowledging that he reaped at least $5 million from the scheme, which was based in Beverly Hills and involved high-end house flips.

Ielements architecture kyle grasso venice ca