Beverly Hills Man Gets 18 Months On Bank Fraud
Posted by Daniel Antolin on Sep 14, 2011 - 1:51:51 PM
Richard Maize. Photo courtesy of his charity's website.
WESTSIDE—A Beverly Hills resident was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for charges relating to exploiting business contacts to borrow more than $18.5 million in inflated banks loans that was used to buy and flip expensive homes in Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, Bel Air and Malibu as part of what the FBI has deemed a "wide-ranging and sophisticated conspiracy."
Richard A. Maize, 53, was sentenced during the late afternoon of Monday, September 12 by United State District Judge Dean D. Pregerson to prison time as well as to pay $4 million restitution to the victims, an FBI news release states. Lehman Brothers Bank and RBC Mortgage, who were among those victimized, have already been paid back $3.6 million.
Starting on December 2, Maize will begin serving his prison sentence on charges for which he previously pleaded guilty. They include conspiracy to commit bank and loan fraud, three counts of bank fraud and one count of falsifying a tax return.
Maize has been identified as the man in the accompanying photo, which was found on both his real estate and philanthropic organization websites, and which can supported with state and tax return documentation.
As a mortgage banker for Americorp Funding, a mortgage company Maize co-founded with offices in Santa Monica and Pasadena, he closed more than $192 million in loans in two years. The aforementioned real estate website states that Maize co-founded a mortgage banking company in 1988.
The State of California Department of Real Estate website lists a Richard Allen Maize, whose license expired on May 25, as having been affiliated with Americorp Funding, Inc. as of June 1995. The website lists a mailing address that is also associated with a charitable organization for which a Richard Maize and his wife filed an IRS Tax Form 990 in 2009.
In December 2000, Maize sold his 45 percent interest in Americorp Funding to RBC Mortgage Company and became president of its Americorp division. Maize exploited his influence with the company to help in funding mortgage loans based on inflated appraisals and false documentations and to get business contacts to take out these same loans.
Federal authorities say that Maize helped Charles Elliot Fitzgerald and Mark Alan Abrams, founders of a mortgage brokering company called Desert Pacific Financial, Inc. get Lehman Brothers Bank to approve 40 loans for borrowers to buy homes the two men owned but sold for about $28 million more than their actual combined value. One $1.4 million-loan was for a $735,000 Bel Air home flipped for $2.37 million. Most of the loan money went to one of the in-house escrow companies controlled by Fitzgerald and Abrams.
Fifty-year-old Fitzgerald of Newbury Park and 50-year-old Abrams of Long Beach received a commission from bank lenders when the ill-gotten home loans closed.
This all happened between March 2000 and July 2002. For his assistance with getting the loans approved, Maize received hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of kickbacks, $175,000 of which he did not report on his 2001 federal tax return, court documents state.
Maize had not provided a comment during press time.
For their involvement with Maize's dealings, Fitzgerald was sentenced to 168 months in federal prison and Abrams was sentenced to serve 78 months behind federal bars.
Three other individuals connected to this case were also sentenced to prison time. They include 40-year-old Santa Monica resident Kyle Grasso, who received 18 months in prison. As well as 44-year-old Lila Rizk of Rancho Santa Margarita, who was sentenced to three years, and 37-year-old Jamieson Matykowski of Laguna Niguel, who received one year.
As a result of what were simply charges in 2008, Americorp Funding had its mortgage broker/banker license revoked in Oregon during that year, according to an administrative order from the state's business services department.
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