“He brings me flowers,” she said.
In the distance I heard a different voice, younger, female. Mom? Who are you talking to?
“What about Swann’s Flat?” I asked. “Pam? Did he tell you about that? Can you try to remember?”
“I... What?”
“Swann’s Flat.”
Mom. Give that to me.
The younger woman came on the line. “Who is this?”
“Sorry,” I said, “can you just put her back on for one second?”
“Don’t call here again.”
“Ma’am, I’m not trying to—”
“Did you hear me? Don’t ever fucking call here, ever again.”
If getting hung up on was an Olympic sport, all the competitors would be PIs.
Chapter 6
I invited Chris in to discuss my findings, outlining some of the other cases and using them as a framework to understand Marisol’s.
“Your grandfather passed in 1995,” I said. “She bought the property the following year. My guess is Pineda approached her right after she’d collected the life insurance. He’s uniquely positioned to know who’s come into money, who’s emotionally vulnerable.”
“Piece of shit. What does he have to say for himself?”
“I think that’s about as much as I’m going to get. I went back and his receptionist threatened to call the cops on me.”
“Give me ten minutes alone with him. I’ll make him talk.”
“I’d like to state for the record that I don’t recommend that.”
He snorted a laugh. “All right. What do you recommend?”
“I’m not an attorney. Unlike Pineda, I’m going to stay in my lane.”
“I’m not asking for legal advice. I just want to know what you think.”
“I agree that he’s unethical. That doesn’t necessarily make him liable.”
“Who knows what guarantees he made to her?”
“She’s not around to testify. Neither is Arenhold. That gives Pineda the last word.”
“We have this other woman. Elvira.”
“Her case was dismissed with prejudice. A competent attorney would eat her for lunch.”
“Pineda’s not even supposed to be practicing.”
“We could try holding his feet to the fire,” I said. “But I don’t recommend that, either.”
“Why not?”
“The guy’s eighty-five, with a history of public service. I’d bet he golfs with half the judges in the county. Now picture him getting up on the stand and doing the feeble-old-guy act. What jury is going to bring down the ax?”
“Criminal charges?”
“The standard of proof is higher, and fraud is notoriously tough because there’s a fine line between that and salesmanship. That’s assuming you can get the cops to care, let alone the DA. For fifty grand? Nobody’s getting a headline out of that.”
“It’s more than fifty,” he said. “The principal’s sixty thousand alone. Plus property tax.”
“Property tax you’re never going to get back. Take my word for it: Anything less than millions and millions of dollars, they’re gonna feel the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.”
“But if what you’re telling me is true, it’s not one case, it’s dozens.”
“At least. Figure that for every person who wakes up and sues, there’s many more like your grandma, who keep writing checks, not realizing that the land is worthless. But in my opinion it’s unlikely that Pineda’s calling the shots. Aside from a few transactions, his name doesn’t come up. My gut is he’s a middleman. Arenhold, too.”
“For who?”
“That’s the question. I pulled the deed of conveyance for your grandmother’s property, trying to find out who she bought it from. It’s not a person. It’s an LLC called Pacific Partners. They’re a shell company in New Mexico, owned by something called Diversified Interests, in Nevada. Which is owned by Western Enterprises, in Wyoming. Confused yet?”
He said, “That’s the point.”
I took him on a tour of websites offering property for sale in Swann’s Flat.
“This is all autogenerated,” he said.
“For sure. Cut-and-paste copy, reused photos. The problem is it’s decentralized. There’s no contact person, just a bunch of corporations with bland names like Diamond Capital or Golden State Ventures. Trace the corporations, they end up in one of four places: Delaware, Nevada, Wyoming, and New Mexico. Those are the states that allow anonymous LLCs, and they’re using multiple layers. I submitted an inquiry, hoping I’d hear from someone, but all I got was a link to a form wanting my address, Social Security number, income, et cetera.”
He scrolled. Cursed quietly. “How is anyone falling for this?”
“I’m not and you’re not,” I said. “But we’re not who they’re targeting. The folks I spoke to had no investing experience. They lived far away and couldn’t easily make the trip. A lot of them don’t speak English very well. All they had to go on were pictures. You see the ocean and the price and imagine yourself in a beach house. Check this out.”
I opened up a popular real estate site and typed in Swann’s Flat.
A single result came back: 22 Black Sand Court.
Chris frowned. “Where’s the rest?”
“This is a private listing. Whoever is running the scam has opted out of MLS, so the properties don’t show up on the aggregators. For an ordinary seller, that’s a bad thing. You want to reach as many buyers as possible, to get a quick sale for the most money. That’s not the goal here. It’s about scale: Set out four thousand fishing poles. Use bait search terms: cheap California real estate or whatever. The form weeds out anyone savvy enough not to give out their personal information. Meanwhile they can wait for someone more naïve to come along and bite.”
“Like lola.”
“I wouldn’t be too harsh on her, Chris. I’m sure they gave her the hard sell. They had to, in those days, because everyone had to be sought out and pitched individually. Now it’s streamlined. Sit back and let the suckers flock to you.”
He pounded the desk lightly. “Oh man. It’s so messed up.”
“Yup. They’re making money at every stage. On the sale, on the fees, assessments, loans, interest. Another advantage they have is time. If I’ve sunk my life savings into this place and debt is piling up, I can’t wait around for years and years. I need to get out now. That’s where the deed transfer comes in. They get the property back for next to nothing and sell it all over again.”
“I just don’t understand why she kept paying them.”
“She had a dream. It’s hard to let that go. Or she was hoping for the price to rebound. Or she realized she made a mistake and was too embarrassed to tell anyone. It might not have occurred to her that she had the option to not pay. When honest people get bills, they pay them.”
He exhaled. “Okay. So what do we do?”
“I’ll tell you what I told you before: It depends on what you expect to get out of it.”
“You want me to let go of my dream.”
“I want you to sleep easy.”
“A name,” he said. “Can you at least get me that?”
“There’s one thread I’d like to pull. I have to warn you, it could start to get expensive.”
“I’m warned. What is it?”
“ML Corporate Solutions. By law, anyone doing business in California has to be reachable. If you want to hide your address, you can hire a registered agent, and they become you, for the purpose of serving process. Every one of these corporations selling property lists ML, or something close. The name keeps changing. It’s M-hyphen-L, or M-slash-L, or M-ampersand-L. Corporate Services or Corporate Agents or Business Solutions. The address is always in Swann’s Flat, but there’s a ton of them. I tried to figure out who owns them, and it’s another giant maze of bullshit. Which is strange: They’ve obviously gone to the trouble of covering their tracks. But they use the same signature. It’s almost like they’re bragging.”