Property Owners May Face Charges in Scam

Property owners who may have paid a Los Angeles County planner for bogus documents could face criminal charges for their parts in a land fraud case that has cost the county more than $2 million in unpaid fees, officials with the district attorney’s office said Friday.

The former planner, Emmet Taylor, was arrested Wednesday and charged with 97 counts of forgery and falsification of public records. County officials allege that Taylor processed more than 450 illegal land division certificates between 1995 and 2000, allowing applicants to skip the public review process and avoid paying thousands in county planning fees.

Some of the landowners now holding the phony documents took no part in the fraud, as they bought the properties after the certificates were issued, said Paul McCarthy, the land divisions chief of the county’s Regional Planning Department. Because they were unaware that the documents were phony, they will not have to go through the expensive public planning process.

But those suspected of knowing better will have to resubmit their plans, McCarthy said. And the district attorney’s Public Integrity Division is considering going after them as well, Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Ceballos said.

“Real estate agents, developers--there are a lot of places this could go,” said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the district attorney.

Taylor, 64, who faces up to 70 years in prison, is expected to be arraigned Tuesday. He is being held on $1.8-million bail, but because prosecutors believe he may have pocketed nearly $500,000 from the scam, they filed a motion requesting proof that any bail money he puts up was legally obtained.

Taylor’s attorney, Richard Shinee, could not be reached for comment Friday. But Robison and McCarthy gave the following details of the scheme:

Word apparently spread among landowners that Taylor could speed up the county’s bureaucratic process. The owners would call Taylor at his county office or his home-based real estate consulting business, then mail their documents to him. Most of the applications were for lots where developments of 12 or fewer homes were planned, and most were in such rural areas as the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys.

For a fee, Taylor would allegedly prepare fraudulent certificates of compliance for the landowners. These documents are valuable because they allow construction to begin without public hearings or an environmental review. To be eligible, the land must have development rights that predate more recent growth restrictions.

In some cases, Taylor forged grant deeds to show that the properties were eligible for the certificates, Robison said.

The plan saved big money for many landowners. In addition to Taylor’s consulting fee--$1,500 per certificate--they paid about $760 for the certificates themselves, McCarthy said. Going through the standard public hearing process usually costs $9,000 to $12,000 in application fees.

But officials grew suspicious after they discovered a certificate that had been erroneously filed by Taylor--and after four checks were sent to the county planning office that were written out to Taylor personally, McCarthy said.

They conducted an audit, which found that much of Taylor’s necessary documentation was missing, McCarthy said. Taylor was fired in late 2000.

Taylor had told his supervisors that he was conducting real estate consulting work from his home, McCarthy said. But planning officials didn’t think the business constituted a conflict of interest because Taylor claimed he was only appraising property, McCarthy said.

Construction has not yet begun on most of the properties involved. But county planning officials said they are still trying to sort through the mess.

The Planning Department now bans the processing of compliance certificate applications sent through the mail and has started to review every one of the more than 1,200 certificates Taylor issued since 1990. Although Taylor began working in the department in 1980, the problems did not start until the 1990s, McCarthy said.

As an added precaution, the Planning Department has ordered the county’s Building and Safety Department to halt the issuance of building permits on any property with a certificate of compliance dated between 1990 and 2000 until its validity can be proved. For hundreds of potential builders, that has meant added bureaucratic delays lasting from a few hours to several weeks, McCarthy said.

McCarthy suspects that some landowners who dealt with Taylor knew that the process was illegal. The real losers, he said, were those neighbors who lost the chance to comment on developments before they were built.

“When somebody uses this underhanded approach,” he said, “they’re denying their neighbors their rights to know what’s going on.”