People Stung by Land Deals See Hope

Winter winds rattle the windows of the unheated Our Lady of Guadalupe church in the remote Los Angeles County community of Hi Vista, but the 75 parishioners shivering under thick overcoats at Sunday services still have reason to give thanks.

For the first time in years, members of this Spanish-speaking community of hardy working-class 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 Latinos, many of whom bought raw Antelope Valley parcels expecting improvements that 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 County 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.

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

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

And earlier this month, supervisors took the first step toward sweeping changes in the way that undeveloped land sales are monitored--offering broad new disclosure protections to land 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 a while, 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 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 filed a civil lawsuit 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.”

What made the Redman sales unique, say prosecutors and others, was his targeting of unsophisticated 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.”

Redman has pleaded not guilty to seven felony counts of theft and fraud in connection with the land sales. He is scheduled for a preliminary hearing on Jan. 23.

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 ensure that buyers of undeveloped land are aware of the often high costs 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 that electricity was readily at hand.

“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 sale price of the land.

Cliff Klein, head of the Los Angeles County district attorney’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 that 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.”