Baltimore Tax Sale Investor Cops Plea, Agrees To Cooperate With Feds In Bid Rigging Probe

In Baltimore, Maryland, an editorial in The Baltimore Sun notes:

• Federal investigators looking into Baltimore's tax-sale auctions have found their canary. Steven L. Berman, a veteran real estate investor from Pennsylvania, has agreed to cooperate with U.S. Justice Department prosecutors as part of a guilty plea in a bid rigging scheme. Mr. Berman is not just any canary. He has participated in tax-sale auctions in the city and five counties for several years and should be intimately familiar with the system, its vulnerabilities and payoffs.

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• Federal prosecutors allege the bid rigging scheme involving Mr. Berman occurred over several years. They say a handful of tax-sale regulars, including Mr. Berman, cut secret deals to avoid bidding against each other, benefiting from the lack of competition as they purchased sale certificates in volume.

For more, see Tax-sale shenanigans.