2 Women Sent to Prison for Land Fraud

Culminating what prosecutors called one of the worst land-fraud schemes in recent memory, two Palmdale women were sentenced Wednesday to state prison and fined more than $1 million for selling unsubdivided land to unwitting Filipino buyers.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charles E. Horan sentenced Carolina Acio Paredes, 65, to 11 years in state prison and ordered her to pay $1.4 million for defrauding more than 60 investors between 1989 and 1998.

Her daughter-in-law, Nenita Sarmiento Paredes, was ordered to spend five years, eight months behind bars and pay $300,000.

Seven of the Paredeses’ victims flew from as far away as Hawaii and Guam to testify at the sentencing hearing.

Many related heartbreaking tales about losing retirement, life savings or children’s college funds after investing it with the defendants.

Eugenia Sahagun, a 70-year-old nurse, sobbed as she told of handing her life savings over to Carolina Paredes as she tended to her dying husband. The money, and that of many others, was never recovered.

“The victims thought they were getting a lot in a subdivision where they could build a dream home,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Victor Minjares. “But they ended up owning an interest in virtually worthless property with a bunch of other people they had never met.”

Authorities said the Paredeses made a small down payment on 500 acres in the Antelope Valley near the Kern County border.

They sold what they said were two- to five-acre lots at up to $35,000 an acre, free and clear. In fact, the land was heavily mortgaged and unsubdivided.

In all, Paredes and her daughter-in-law fleeced the buyers of $1.4 million, according to Minjares, although the California Department of Real Estate has estimated the pair may have defrauded more than 200 victims of as much as $4 million.

“This is the worst case of real estate fraud I have ever seen in my career,” Minjares said.

The women were arrested last August after ignoring cease-and-desist orders from state officials.

In January, Carolina Paredes pleaded no contest to 10 felony counts of grand theft and the illegal sale of unsubdivided land.

Her daughter-in-law entered the same plea to six counts.

The Paredes investigation came to light shortly after another high profile desert land case, in which developer Marshall Redman was charged with several counts of grand theft and fraud for selling raw land to dozens of families, mostly Latino immigrants.

The 69-year-old former developer pleaded no contest to grand theft and filing false documents.

He was sentenced last August to a year in county jail, but is serving the sentence at his home, where he is required to wear an electronic monitoring device.