Ongoing Antitrust Feds' Probe Into Northern California Foreclosure Sale Bid Rigging Rackets Yields 25th Guilty Plea Agreement

From the U.S. Department of Justice (Washington, D.C.):

• A Northern California real estate investor has agreed to plead guilty for her role in conspiracies to rig bids and commit mail fraud at public real estate foreclosure auctions in Northern California, the Department of Justice announced.
  
  Felony charges were filed [] in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland against Danli Liu of Fremont, Calif.
  
  To date, as a result of the department’s ongoing antitrust investigation into bid rigging and fraud at public real estate foreclosure auctions in Northern California, 25 individuals, including Liu, have agreed to plead or have pleaded guilty.
  
  According to court documents, Liu conspired with others not to bid against one another, but instead to designate a winning bidder to obtain selected properties at public real estate foreclosure auctions in Alameda County, Calif.
  
  Liu was also charged with a conspiracy to use the mail to carry out a scheme to fraudulently acquire title to selected properties sold at public auctions, to make and receive payoffs, and to divert money to co-conspirators that would have gone to mortgage holders and others by holding second, private auctions open only to members of the conspiracy.
  
  The department said that the selected properties were then awarded to the conspirators who submitted the highest bids in the second, private auctions. The private auctions often took place at or near the courthouse steps where the public auctions were held.
  

For the Justice Department press release, see Northern California Real Estate Investor Agrees to Plead Guilty to Bid Rigging at Public Foreclosure Auctions (Investigation Has Yielded 25 Plea Agreements to Date).