3 Women Plead Guilty in Land Fraud Scheme

A Palmdale woman and two accomplices have pleaded guilty to bilking more than 70 Filipinos, mostly poor immigrants, out of $1.4 million in a high-desert land fraud scheme.

Carolina Acio Paredes, 65, will be sentenced March 18 and could receive up to 12 years in state prison. She pleaded guilty to 10 felony counts of grand theft and business and professional code violations.

Paredes and her partners, who include a daughter-in-law, sold parcels of land at greatly inflated prices for almost 10 years to Filipinos, falsely claiming the land was subdivided and ready to build on, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Victor M. Minjares, who is handling the case. She pleaded guilty last week.

He said more than 200 victims are estimated to have lost about $4 million in the scheme, which began in the late 1980s. Due to the long time lapse and provisions of the Statute of Limitations, many of the crimes could not be prosecuted.

Minjares called the scheme an “affinity crime,” in which a more sophisticated person from an ethnic group develops a bond of trust with members of the same group because of their common background. Paredes and the others are all of Filipino descent.

“They take advantage of people by getting them to cash in their life insurance policies, mortgage their home or give away their children’s college savings to invest in land,” Minjares said. “They would tell people that college was free in California if you owned property.”

Also facing a sentence of up to eight years in state prison on six felony counts is Nenita Paredes, 44, Carolina Paredes’ daughter-in-law.

A third defendant, Gloria Palacol, an insurance agent in Hawaii who brought clients to the Paredeses, is expected to be sentenced to 12 to 16 months in jail, Minjares said.

Most of the schemes involved the sale of raw land near Palmdale and Lake Los Angeles that was never subdivided and fell into foreclosure. Minjares called chances that any victims will recover their losses “very unlikely.”

Paredes and her partners “spent the money on high living, using a lot of it to travel between the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam and California,” Minjares said.

Because of the complexity of the case and mounds of paperwork, an investigation by the state Department of Real Estate and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s commercial crimes division took almost a year to complete.

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, mostly to Latino immigrants.

The 69-year-old former developer was sentenced in 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.