Developer, Wife Held in Pasadena Grand Theft Case

A onetime premier Pasadena developer and his wife, who fled the United States 14 years ago for an English country estate after allegedly bilking their investors out of millions of dollars, are in County Jail after being captured in Miami.

Stanley Seldon Sirotin, who prosecutors say enriched himself through a scheme of offshore corporations and Swiss bank accounts, is charged with five counts of grand theft for embezzling at least $4.2 million from investors in a Pasadena retail and office complex during the early 1980s.

He also faces four counts of securities fraud and six charges of filing false tax returns and failing to file tax returns, prosecutors said Monday.

The 73-year-old developer, who once bragged about a lifestyle that included a Rolls-Royce and a Malibu mansion, is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles Municipal Court on Wednesday. He pleaded not guilty at an arraignment last week.

Tim Browne, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who pursued the developer during the 1980s, said Miami-Dade County law enforcement officials captured Sirotin and his wife last month at Miami International Airport as he was “getting off a plane from England. After all those years he was apprehended.”

Sirotin’s wife, Alice Beryl Sirotin, was arrested as a co-defendant on the same 15 charges. Both were extradited from Florida two weeks ago and are being held in lieu of $1-million bail, officials said.

Miami-Dade County authorities were tipped off that the Sirotins were coming into Miami from England, officials said.

Sirotin, who authorities said lived the life of an English country gentlemen with a Range Rover and farmhouse, is being held in the Twin Towers jail medical ward.

“We are so happy. This man is finally going to have to answer for his crimes,” said Anita Baumoel, who said she lost the money she and her husband invested in Sirotin’s development projects. “I’m just worried he’ll make bail and flee back to England to live off the investors again.”

When the Sirotins left for England in 1984, their businesses were in financial trouble, they owed $5.5 million in judgments and investors were suing them seeking $134 million.

Investors have not seen their money again but vowed to put the developer behind bars.

In July 1986, after a two-year probe, the district attorney’s office filed fraud charges against the Sirotins. Most of the counts stemmed from a limited partnership of private investors that developed the Commons, a three-story, 75,000-square-foot retail-office complex on Pasadena’s South Lake Avenue.

Because the couple had already left the country, prosecutors initiated extradition proceedings. But Sirotin and his wife fought them and the British government declined to return the couple.

Al Kaufer, an attorney who said he invested $50,000 in the Commons, complained that prosecutors did not aggressively pursue the extradition.

“I guess economic crimes against the wealthy don’t count for much,” he said. “I was shocked when my brother told me they’d arrested him. I guess he thought he never get caught.”

Sirotin was a high-level developer in Pasadena between 1978 and 1984, building the Commons, the Burlington Arcade and Les Bureaux, three upscale commercial developments.

Through an umbrella company for 16 limited partnerships, Sirotin raised millions of dollars from private investors for his projects.

But prosecutors alleged that Sirotin, with his wife’s help, diverted large sums of that money using a maze of foreign accounts and corporations.

Prosecutors alleged that bank records showed that in three 1986 transactions, the couple diverted at least $432,000 from the Commons, a European-style marketplace development, to the Swiss bank account of Great Hall, a Panamanian entity with a Paris address.

Much of the money was embezzled through checks written and signed by Sirotin’s wife or checks written to her, a prosecutor told The Times.

In a 1980 solicitation letter for the Commons, Sirotin told potential investors that he had obtained an $8.5-million bank loan, engaged a general contractor and presold all office space.

Dozens of investors bought into the project--only to discover that there was neither a construction loan nor a contractor and not a single office had been sold, according to prosecutors.

Sirotin was a rising star in Pasadena during the early 1980s, friendly with politicians and social leaders, and was the subject of flattering articles that adorned his office.

But as the business came unraveled, so did Sirotin’s past. He said he had received a law degree from Columbia and done successful developments in Madison, Wis. But a Times article in 1986 found that he never received the degree and his dealings in Wisconsin consisted of a half-finished hotel.

Today, the Commons is under new ownership. Its 59 investors lost about $5.8 million. Les Bureaux, a nine-story office building, was sold and investors lost $3.4 million, while the Burlington Arcade was sold after accumulating $3 million in debt.

Although his 30-acre estate in Crowhurst, England, was seized by the general contractor for Sirotin’s three projects for unpaid bills in 1985, Sirotin still lived comfortably in southern England; he refused to answer questions when confronted by a Los Angeles television reporter there last year.