El Centro native being sued in alleged Ponzi scheme; FBI investigating Lisa Mahoney

November 6, 2009 @ 3:17 pm

By Gina Germani | ivnews.INFO

An El Centro native is under FBI investigation, accused of swindling at least $3.4 million in a Ponzi scheme from investors in the Los Angeles area and as far away as Peru during the last four years.

Lisa Garcia Mahoney, a 1979 graduate of Central Union High School and currently a real estate agent in Simi Valley, told ivnews.INFO that she has been cooperating with the government in the investigation for more than a year.

The FBI would only confirm that the 48-year-old Mahoney is the focus of a Ponzi scheme investigation and she has not yet been charged with any crime. “It would be inappropriate to comment on a pending investigation,” said Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles field office of the FBI.

Mahoney is also the primary defendant in a lawsuit filed October 6 in Los Angeles Superior Court by nearly 40 plaintiffs who claim she victimized them in an investment scheme involving purported land developments in Texas and in Bakersfield and Temecula.

All of the claims in the lawsuit recount dealings with Mahoney, who is alleged to have lured investors with a “highly lucrative,” “legitimate,” investment program that promised returns ranging from 24 percent to 100 percent in fewer than six months.

In a Ponzi fraud, investors are offered abnormally high, short-term returns on non-existent or unregistered securities.  Operators of the scheme pay back early investors their initial monies as well as the promised earnings in the time promised, often generating additional investments and investors.  But the money used to pay those loans comes from other investors’ payments.  Eventually, the scheme collapses as the more recent investors fail to get their money back.

In a September interview with KTTV-TV, Tom Aci, a Valencia real estate agent, said he and his wife, Devin, didn’t “blindly” invest with Mahoney.

“We really saw people getting paid,” Aci said in the TV interview.  “We saw documents. We saw ledgers.  We saw that and we wanted to jump in, too.  We wanted to take advantage of what everybody else was taking advantage of.”

Devin Aci told ivnews.INFO that Mahoney did repay an initial investment and the promised return.  They then reinvested with Mahoney, eventually about $400,000 over several months.  But after repayment checks paid by Mahoney started bouncing, Aci involved her bank, Wells Fargo, which she says alerted the FBI to the alleged scam.

Aci said Mahoney took their money and never invested it in any land or with any

developer.  None of the people who invested with Mahoney were allowed to know where the Texas and California developments were located, the names of the developments, nor even the name of the land owner/developer.  Plaintiffs’ claims are that Mahoney told them the land owners and developers didn’t want to be bothered by investors and that she was entrusted with confidentiality.

It’s unknown if the land owners and the developments even exist.  Steven Goldsobel, the attorney representing Mahoney in the criminal investigation, said he couldn’t discuss the case and couldn’t answer questions about the development.  Mahoney scheduled twice to be interviewed by ivnews.INFO, and twice cancelled.  She has not returned subsequent requests for information about the developer and about claims she made in initial discussions that other people had stolen money from her.

Aci is the lead plaintiff in the civil suit which is scheduled to go to court January 4, 2010.  The 231-page complaint and exhibits in the lawsuit suggest that Mahoney occasionally enlisted the help of her sister, Marisa Garcia, and her cousin, Angelina Marselle, both El Centro natives now living in the L.A. area.  Neither Garcia, nor Marselle, who is an employee of the Acis, are named as defendants in the suit.

Other defendants named in the lawsuit are Veronica Lemus, a California National Bank branch manager, as well as Cal National.  The bank was among nine institutions shut down on October 30 by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.  Cal National has reopened under the U.S. Bank name.

The charges in the lawsuit leveled against Mahoney include violations of California corporations law in that she is not a certified broker-dealer and she sold unqualified securities by “intentional” and “negligent” misrepresentation, among other charges.

Cal National and its branch manager, Lemus, are accused in the suit of “aiding and abetting securities fraud” and breach of fiduciary duty.  Plaintiffs claim that Lemus and Mahoney were close acquaintances.  The suit says that Lemus, on behalf of Mahoney, assured stiffed investors that bounced checks drawn on Cal National would eventually clear and be payable.

Mahoney is the daughter of former El Centro paint store owners, Ray and Mary Ann Garcia, who have been living in the Los Angeles area for several years now.