Hope Blooms in Desert for Land Buyers

HI VISTA —  Winter winds rattle the windows of the unheated Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in this distant corner of Los Angeles County, but the 75 parishioners shivering under thick overcoats at Sunday services still have much reason to give thanks.

For the first time in years, members of this Spanish-speaking community of hardy settlers harbor real hope that the homesteads they thought they had purchased from millionaire developer Marshall Redman will one day be theirs after all.

A Times series showed how Redman and his firms sold land to 2,500 working-class Latinos, many of whom bought raw Antelope Valley parcels expecting improvements, which were never made.

Citing the stories--which revealed how half a dozen government agencies took years to act in the Redman matter despite more than 100 complaints--the Board of Supervisors launched two inquiries, one into the plight of buyers who were living on the land without utilities, and another seeking ways to reduce land fraud.

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In the summer, after years of being denied water service, dozens of Redman purchasers living on remote desert plots were given access to county wells. And a court-appointed receiver is working to untangle the legal mess left in the wake of the land sales.

Meanwhile, county officials, working with the federal government, are considering a program to help some of Redman’s alleged victims purchase foreclosed houses in the High Desert, helping them to realize their dream of home ownership.

And earlier this month, supervisors took the first step toward sweeping changes in the way undeveloped-land sales are monitored--offering broad new disclosure protections to buyers and creating an early-warning system to track other potential schemes.

“For the first time in a long, long while, there is hope in this community,” said church Deacon Joe Garcia. “People aren’t worried like they were before. They used to feel like this Mr. Redman had their money and that there was nothing they could do.

“But now you can hear it, people saying, ‘It may take awhile, but things are happening.’ ”

In the aftermath of the county’s land-sale investigations, sources close to the Redman case described key lessons learned from the desert sales. Most important, they say, is the realization that the specter of widespread land fraud is still very alive in California.

Recently, Kern County officials have investigated reports of irregular land offers to Korean buyers from Los Angeles, and authorities have recently been made aware of alleged sales of illegally subdivided land to Hawaiian and Filipino investors.

“Desert land swindles are an old California fraud scheme--as old as the hills themselves--and this case shows that hasn’t lost a step, even in the modern era,” said C.M. “Bud” Starr II, a Kern County assistant district attorney who along with L.A. city prosecutors filed a civil case against Redman in 1994.

“It’s opened our eyes to the fact there is no limit to the extent people can be victimized in land deals and that there’s a lot more fraud out there than we can easily handle. I can tell you, it’s really been an eye-opener for a lot of people.”

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What made the Redman sales unique, say prosecutors and others, is the 68-year-old millionaire’s targeting of Latinos--many of them new immigrants--who struggled with their English and had little understanding of their rights or the complexities of most land sales.

For more than a decade, authorities allege, Redman advertised in the Spanish-speaking media, appealing to working-class families throughout urban Los Angeles. He took busloads to view properties and prompted many to sign for the land on the spot--using long-term land-sale contracts, many of which conveyed undivided interests that buyers later learned they shared with strangers, prosecutors say.

“These were honest, hard-working people,” said Pastor Herrera Jr., director of the county’s Department of Consumer Affairs, which will be the contact agency for land fraud complaints in the county’s new early-warning system.

“They wanted out of high-crime areas of the city. They were promised land to call their own in open country that was free of crime and had clean air. For many, it didn’t happen.”

Added Starr: “Immigrants have been coming to this country for 200 years looking for opportunity and, for many, that opportunity has been spelled L-A-N-D. These were people working two jobs to build a life for their family. And what they got instead of opportunity was a millstone around their neck, land they couldn’t even call their own.”

State land sale experts have characterized the alleged Redman scheme as the story of an unscrupulous developer being in the right place at the right time.

“Clearly, Marshall Redman was an opportunist,” said Carlyle W. Hall, a public interest lawyer. “And the opportunity for these sales was there with the lax county enforcement of subdivision laws.

“To make matters worse, he took advantage of a vulnerable Hispanic population with zero political power and clout who unfortunately became easy prey.”

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As for Redman, the developer has pleaded not guilty to seven felony charges involving the land sales. He is scheduled for a preliminary hearing next month.

But as recently as Dec. 3, the state Department of Real Estate ordered Redman and his Bella Vista Land Co. to stop selling undeveloped land without disclosing all terms in documents required by law.

The reports are designed to assure that buyers of undeveloped land are aware of the often high cost of bringing water and utilities to land in remote locations.

Javier Zermeno, who paid Redman $40,000 for a small High Desert parcel last year, said he was not given a public report. He said Redman assured him electricity was readily available.

“He said there was electricity that we could pull from some poles nearby,” Zermeno said in Spanish. “He didn’t say anything about any cost.”

Documents show the cost of bringing utilities to the property is estimated at $70,000, nearly twice the price of the land.

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Cliff Klein, head of the Los Angeles County prosecutor’s major fraud unit, said the office has tried to hire multilingual investigators to cope with the spread of crime against immigrants. “We need good laws,” he said. “The more people you successfully prosecute for real estate fraud, the stronger the message to those who think about doing it that this is a serious matter.”

Dave Vannatta, land use advisor to Supervisor Mike Antonovich, said authorities believe they have only begun to recognize the scope of Antelope Valley land fraud.

“What’s spooky,” he said, “is that right now there are probably others out there doing the same thing Redman did--using long-term unrecorded contracts so authorities don’t even know the land has been sold.

“If this guy could get away with it for as long as he did, how do we know there’s not other developers out there as well, selling to Koreans or who knows who?

“The answer is, we don’t.”