Albert D. Seeno Jr. Indicted

Well not just yet but . . . be patient

Greed is Good

Seeno responds to allegations in Nevada lawsuit

Seeno responds to allegations in Nevada lawsuit

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Developer: No effect on Benicia property
By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

Lawsuits related to a dispute between Albert Seeno Jr., his brother Thomas and their former Nevada business partner, F. Harvey Whittemore, won’t affect any plans for a large Benicia parcel owned by the Seeno family, Seeno Jr. said Thursday.

In a letter to The Benicia Herald, Seeno wrote, “Please be advised that the current issues with respect to our former business partner in Nevada will have no impact, financial or otherwise, on any potential development plans we may have in Benicia or any of our California or Nevada homebuilding operations.”


Wingfield Nevada Group Holding Company, Tuffy Ranch properties and the Foothills at Wingfield — three Seeno-interest Nevada companies — filed suit Jan. 27 in Clark County, Nev., Business Court, accusing Whittemore, a Nevada attorney and businessman, and his wife, Annette, of misappropriating millions of dollars.
The suit said the Seenos noticed discrepancies in financial records about May 2010, and started an investigation.
That suit said Whittemore confessed to several years’ worth of theft, diversion of funds, asset misappropriation and breach of fiduciary duties, particularly money caretaking; as well as using company funds for unauthorized personal matters and for political donations to Whittemore’s advantage; embezzlement; and misuse of company assets.

“The egregious acts of Whittemore as alleged in this Complaint have cost Wingfield, its affiliates, and the Seenos tens of millions of dollars,” the suit said.
The Whittemores responded Feb. 1 with a suit of their own filed in the U.S. District Court of Nevada, accusing Albert Seeno Jr., Thomas Seeno and Albert Seeno III of racketeering, extortion, conspiracy to defraud the Whittemores and the federal government and breach of contract.

Their suit said they are owed about $30 million by the Wingfield Nevada Group, and that their family has been damaged in excess of $60 million.
The suit also said Seeno has falsely accused the Whittemores of embezzlement and other criminal activity, and forced the Whittemores out of the Wingfield Nevada Group.

“For over a full year now, the Whittemores have been living under the threat of death, serious bodily injury and/or criminal and civil prosecution because of actions threatened by the Seenos,” the suit said.

Both suits have requested trials by jury.

In his letter to The Herald on Thursday, Seeno Jr. responded, “The malicious claims that have been made from our former partner in a highly sensationalized lawsuit and reported to the press are blatantly untrue and offensive.

“This is an attempt by a desperate man to divert attention away from the prior lawsuit filed against him for embezzlement of company funds and his personal misdeeds. It is nothing more than a press release in the form of a lawsuit.

“When the time is right in Benicia, we hope to work with the staff to develop a project that will make economic sense and be a proud addition to the city of Benicia.”

The Seenos are a family of developers. The late Albert Seeno Sr., the son of an immigrant fisherman, died last year at 84; he started the Albert D. Seeno Construction Company in 1938. It has built homes, apartments and commercial centers around the Bay Area.

Two of his sons, Albert Jr. and Tom Seeno, took over that business when their father began transitioning into retirement. While Seeno Jr.’s letter said the Nevada lawsuits won’t affect plans for the local property, there are no plans currently filed at City Hall for any development on the Seeno parcel on Benicia’s north side.
In a letter sent June 29, 2010, to then-City Manager Jim Erickson, Seeno Jr. announced he was withdrawing the applications originally filed in 2005 for a business park he and his son, Seeno III, had proposed for 285 acres of their 527-acre parcel by Lake Herman Road.

That withdrawal came after years of meetings and discussions about the project, including the imposition of about 200 conditions placed on the project in a 2009 City Council resolution to which Seeno had agreed to keep the project alive.

Seeno’s announcement came a few days before the Council was considering terminating the application, citing difficulties in communicating with the developer.

At its June 1, 2010 meeting, the Council said Seeno needed to support city-initiated planning processes that includes his property, and that he should propose a solution to Benicia’s loss of impact fees that have increased during the past five years. Those were some of the conditions of the application’s April 6 extension.

The extension also required the applicant to give the Council semi-annual updates.In a reply to the city’s action dated May 6, 2010, Seeno III promised the progress reports, but the Council decided that was the only issue his letter addressed.

Seeno III said in that letter the delay in developing the park didn’t alter the impact fees imposed on the project, and that it “would be a waste of state taxpayer resources” to embark on design or planning procedures until the economy starts improving. Seeno said there might be alternative uses for the land.
But in a June 29, 2010 letter, Seeno Jr. accused Mayor Elizabeth Patterson of “slanderous comments about me and my family on the public record,” adding that “they certainly make me question why I or anyone else would consider proceeding with a development project in the city of Benicia.”

Once the letter was received, Patterson questioned its timing and the withdrawal of the Benicia Business Park Master Plan and Vesting Tentative Map applications. She said the timing was related to the 2011 city elections, when she would be running for re-election. “They don’t want a strong mayor who stands up to Seeno. They don’t want a mayor who insists on protecting the hills, air and water, and avoiding big-time traffic increases. And they don’t want a mayor who asks for assurances in writing.” Patterson, who was opposed by then-Vice Mayor Alan Schwartzman in the 2011 race, won re-election, and Schwartzman returned to the Council to complete his current term.

Seeno executive accepts plea deal

Seeno executive accepts plea deal, agrees to testify against company in FBI probe

By Matthias Gafni Contra Costa Times

Posted:   03/15/2013 05:04:57 PM PDT

Updated:   03/17/2013 01:49:02 AM PDT

OAKLAND -- A top Seeno company sales executive pleaded guilty Friday to one count of wire fraud in exchange for her testimony against her employer, a dramatic twist in the Seeno saga that could strengthen the criminal case against the powerful real estate empire.

The attorney for Carey Hendrickson, 37, of Martinez, also spoke to Bay Area News Group for the first time, saying his client will testify if called before a grand jury or trial and that she was a small player in the case that began with a 2010 FBI raid of the Seeno family's Concord headquarters.

"I know she's not the biggest cog in this machine," attorney John Runfola said outside a federal courtroom in Oakland.

Hendrickson was indicted last year on three counts of wire fraud, becoming the first casualty from the 2010 FBI raid in which agents carted off dozens of boxes of evidence in their efforts to unravel complicated real estate transactions that stretched across much of the East Bay. The Seeno family empire, which has built homes across the Bay Area for generations and donated to countless political campaigns, has been heavily fined for environmental improprieties, but has avoided criminal wrongdoing.

She is accused of participating in a scheme that inflated the value of four houses she tried to buy in 2008 in a struggling Pittsburg development owned by her employer. Court documents show Hendrickson's alleged activities may have been part of a larger Seeno effort to inflate the value of homes, also known as a "builder bailout."

As part of the deal, prosecutors dropped two of the counts. She could still face a maximum penalty of 20 years and has agreed to pay $293,000 in restitution, but will not be sentenced until her cooperation with the prosecution is complete. A sentencing hearing was set for Sept. 12.

It has been a stressful year for Hendrickson, who is on disability leave from Discovery Sales, a Seeno company subsidiary, where she worked as district sales manager and managed the Contra Costa sales teams. She told the federal judge Friday that she missed Thursday's planned court date due to an "extreme anxiety attack."

In the half-hour proceeding Friday, a soft-spoken Hendrickson responded to the judge's questions before a nearly empty courtroom, except for a Seeno attorney who took notes.

In her plea agreement, Hendrickson accepted responsibility for hiding within loan documents down payment and mortgage assistance Seeno Homes promised her. In turn, Seeno Homes failed to disclose those builder incentives in the paperwork it submitted to the lender, leading the bank to issue loans based on inflated sales prices, according to the FBI affidavit.

The sales tactic of offering to pay a buyer's down payment and the first year of mortgage payments without disclosing that incentive to lenders is part of an emerging scam called a "builder's bailout," according to mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

Struggling builders often resort to such methods to quickly move inventory at inflated prices to maintain large lines of credit, according to Freddie Mac.

During a 16-month period in 2008 and 2009, various Seeno companies borrowed at least $1.24 billion in construction lines of credit, according to Contra Costa deed of trust notes. A now-settled civil lawsuit also claimed that the Seeno brothers owed $500 million in income taxes around that time.

The affidavit hints that Hendrickson may have preached the scam to her sales staff.

In an Aug. 23, 2007, email from Hendrickson to her Seeno sales staff titled "Appraisers," she told them not to inform appraisers about the incentive program.

"Offering up incentive information to the appraisers has destroyed the scheduled closings on two homes in the last couple weeks and we have been fighting to get new comps (comparable sales data) to appraisers this week," she wrote.

Hendrickson's attorney said his client was ready to move on with her life. "Her job before this was selling automobiles. She had very little experience in this industry and learned by example and by doing," he said. "A lot of people in the banking and mortgage industry made a lot of mistakes, many of which were criminal in nature. Carey was a lower level person who made some of those mistakes. She's accepted responsibility for the fact that she did do things that were criminal in nature."

Seeno Homes sales manager indicted

 

Seeno Homes sales manager indicted on federal felony fraud charges

A federal grand jury has indicted a sales manager for Seeno Homes, the company owned by the Northern California family engaged in a high-profile legal battle with Nevada lobbyist and businessman Harvey Whittemore.

Carey Hendrickson is charged with three felony counts of fraud for an alleged home-buying scheme involving Seeno Homes and its sales company, Discovery Sales. Each count carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.

Neither Hendrickson nor her lawyer could be reached Thursday, but she pleaded innocent to the charges during her April 26 arraignment in the U.S. District Court for Northern California. She is scheduled to return to court for a status conference on June 28.

Jack Gillund, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Francisco, said he could not comment on whether anyone from the Seeno or Discovery companies could also face charges, but a Seeno lawyer said no other charges have been filed.

Hendrickson was a Discovery Sales manager in 2008 when the alleged scheme occurred, the indictment said. Discovery, Seeno Homes and Collateral Financing Group share office space in Concord, Calif., and work together to develop, finance and sell homes, the indictment said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the Seeno Homes offices in 2010. Albert Seeno Jr. and his lawyer told the Reno Gazette-Journal during a February interview that the FBI was investigating some local officials and they were collecting documents from everyone who made contributions to those officials. Seeno Homes is the largest single-family home builder in the Bay Area.

According to the indictment, Hendrickson "engaged in a scheme and artifice to defraud financial institutions by simultaneously purchasing multiple residences from Seeno Homes, through its affiliate West Coast Builders, and submitting false and fraudulent loan applications to lenders for the purpose of obtaining mortgage loans to finance these purchases."

The aim of this type of scheme is to pump up the market to make it look like developers are selling more homes than they have sold, according to a housing expert.

The Seeno’s San Francisco-based lawyer, Bill Goodman, said Hendrickson’s indictment did not involve the Seenos.

"They may be mentioned in the indictment but there is nothing in the indictment that implicates the Seenos or their companies in any wrongdoing," Goodman said. "No charges have been brought and we’re optimistic that’s going to continue to be the case."

Goodman acknowledged that the FBI "executed search warrants 2 ½ years ago at the Seeno offices," but declined to say what the agents took during the raid.

Thomas and Albert Seeno Jr., not only own Seeno Homes and Whittemore’s former company, Wingfield Nevada Group, they also are part owners of the Peppermill Resort Spa Casino and hold gaming licenses in five other Nevada casinos.

Nevada Gaming Control Board Chairman Mark Lipparelli said he can’t comment on specific cases, but said that generally, gaming license holders are subject to licensing rules, which include maintaining a level of "suitability."

"Licensees have a continuing obligation to demonstrate their licensing suitability," Lipparelli said.

The Seenos are involved in competing lawsuits with Whittemore: The Seenos filed a state suit claiming Whittemore embezzled funds from the Wingfield company, while Whittemore responded with a federal suit accusing the Seenos of racketeering and making death threats.

Federal prosecutors filed a complaint against Hendrickson in February, and then took the case to a federal grand jury, which indicted her on April 24.

In an affidavit supporting the complaint, an FBI agent said she used money from a Seeno-owned company to buy four houses that had been developed and built by the Seenos. Hendrickson allegedly lied and omitted facts on her loan applications.

Among the alleged lies: she said she was buying each of the houses as her primary residence, and hid the fact that she was buying four homes at the same time. She also didn’t disclose that Seeno Homes was providing seller financing, which cut the net sales price by more than $500,000, the agent said.

The banks made three transfers to Hendrickson’s account for a down payment in May and June 2008, the indictment said. One was for $115,000, another for $125,000 and a third for $116,507.

Her purchases caused the banked and their appraisers to overvalue the Seeno properties, the agent said