Purchasers of Redman Land Find Precious Few Answers

Reyna Sorto wanted answers--finally, answers that made sense.

The 51-year-old Lawndale woman crossed her arms, set her jaw and demanded to know why she had worked two jobs for nearly seven years to afford the payments on land bought from developer Marshall Redman--money she had now all but given up for lost.

Delia Lopez wanted answers, too. Instead of owning a scenic desert retirement plot, as Redman promised, why are her parents so broke they had to move in with the children?

“This supposed dream property has become their worst nightmare,” she said. “Please, can’t someone here tell us where we stand?”

The women were among some 800 anxious customers of Redman’s who attended a series of recent meetings to explain the complex financial fallout from an alleged high desert land swindle.

Many wore cowboy hats and double-wide belt buckles. Others held stark-eyed children or wore uniforms suggesting they had rushed to the evening meetings straight from work.

All had invested hard-earned cash in land that promised them a tranquil retirement far from the stresses of the city. Now many are stuck with near-worthless land they can neither sell nor build upon.

In May, the 67-year-old Redman, a developer with 30 years experience selling high desert land, was charged in connection with sales of undeveloped Antelope Valley parcels to 2,500 customers, many of them working-class Latinos from urban Los Angeles neighborhoods. In many cases, the land had legal problems or didn’t even belong to Redman.

In 1994, prosecutors from Kern County and the Los Angeles city attorney’s office sued the developer and three of his companies in civil court in an attempt to reclaim an estimated $20 million invested in the sales scheme. As part of the court settlement, a receiver was appointed to take over Redman’s real estate empire and marshal funds back to the alleged victims.

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But more than two years later, many alleged Redman victims said, they have yet to see a cent of their investment while they continue to make payments on the land. Without deeds, hundreds still don’t know if they legally own their property or if they can legally develop the land, as Redman’s sales staff promised they could.

After responding to hundreds of letters and calls in recent months, receiver Richard Weissman met with buyers in Lancaster and Los Angeles to offer both good and bad news:

Only 30% of the properties sold by Redman had legal problems--far fewer than originally suspected, he told the buyers. But for people who want their money back, it still could take years before they see even a portion, if any, of their investment.

Many of the 800 who attended the meetings showed little understanding of the complex real estate transactions involved. Many investors think their monthly payments are still going to Redman’s companies rather than the court receiver.

Through an interpreter, Weissman started the second of two Los Angeles-area meetings Thursday night clearing up that misunderstanding. “How many of you think I work for Marshall Redman?” he asked a gathering of about 270 buyers at county Public Works headquarters in Alhambra.

About 20 people raised their hands.

“Incorrecto,” he said, his bad Spanish sending a ripple of laughter through the crowd.

It was a rare moment of levity. The previous night, Weissman had spent 90 minutes explaining his strategy for garnering funds for buyers before opening the floor to questions. By the time he did, tempers were flaring.

“These people came here to vent,” explained Los Angeles County Building Supt. John Kelly. “And vent they did.”

For safety reasons, county officials had a small security force on hand. “But we’re not really needed,” said George Mendoza, Public Works security director. “It’s just people shouting out their anger. That’s their right. It’s nothing major.”

One meeting--attended by about 200 buyers--was held in Lancaster for Redman customers who moved onto their property. Two others were held in Alhambra for the majority of Redman’s customers--people who bought the far-flung desert land as an investment.

“I’ve got a piece of land in the middle of nowhere,” complained Los Angeles mechanic Julian Torres. “What can I do with that? It’s not worth anything.”

Tony Santana, a 35-year-old dirt hauler from Los Angeles, was angry--at Redman, at the receiver and at the government. “Everyone is playing with us like we are dumb, like we are cattle,” he said. “We are not dumb. And we are not animals.

“This Redman still has a lot of money in the bank. The authorities should go after everything he has--his paintings and his art collection--and not just the money from his three companies. Marshall Redman is still a very rich man. And he has $40,000 of my money.”

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Jose Romero was mad at himself.

“We should have known what we were doing when we gave this man so much of our money,” he said of the $23,000 he and his wife, Marta, paid to Redman. “But we didn’t.”

At each meeting, the confusion and frustration felt by Redman buyers were palpable.

On Thursday, when Weissman asked buyers to make copies of their sales documents for receivership use, 100 people scrambled to line up in front of one copy machine. And when he suggested buyers line up to ask questions, another 100 stampeded toward the microphone.

Workers supplied buyers with a list of contacts in each of the three counties where Redman sold land, as well as easy-to-read charts explaining in both Spanish and English how much it would cost to legally develop the desert property if they decided to keep it.

One chart showed that the cost of water, electricity and sewage disposal could run $85,000 to $105,000--on top of the price offered for the land itself.

There was also a list of the receiver’s 27 most-asked questions, including “What is a receiver and what does he do?” “Will I be getting all my money back? When?” and “Can someone show me the location of my property?”

“We’re trying to come up with answers for these people. We’re trying to be their advocates,” Kelly explained. “Sooner or later, they’re going to have to decide if they want to keep their property or not. And we believe they need to know some of the costs involved in making that property legal if they do decide to keep it.”

Weissman, however, was to the point about one matter: The receivership could not remedy the fact that most buyers paid far too much for their properties--often 10 to 20 times the actual value of the land.

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On Thursday night, Delia Lopez was bewildered by most of the answers she got. Her mother, 56-year-old Delphina Salazar, bought five acres from Redman for her and each of her five children. Now her plans seem dashed.

“This just doesn’t seem fair, that a straightforward investment could lead to such complications,” Lopez said. “My mother was ready to retire in two years. Now everything is up in the air. Recently, she and my father moved in with my sister because they couldn’t pay rent and keep up the payments on the land.

“So much for the American Dream.”