Feds Squeeze Two More Guilty Pleas Out Of Real Estate Investors For Roles In Bid Rigging Atlanta-Area Foreclosure Sales; Antitrust Probe Into Auction Irregularities Continues

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

• Two Georgia real estate investors pleaded guilty [] for their roles in bid-rigging and fraud conspiracies committed at public real estate foreclosure auctions in Georgia, the Department of Justice announced.
  
  Ellis Galyon and Christopher Anderson each admitted that they agreed with other real estate investors to rig auctions of foreclosed homes in the Atlanta metro area. According to court documents filed [] in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta, the conspirators agreed not to compete for the purchase of selected foreclosed homes so that they could win the auctions for those homes with artificially low bids. The winning bidders then paid off the other conspirators who had refrained from bidding against them.
  
  As a result of Galyon and Anderson’s actions, conspirators profited from money that otherwise would have gone to mortgage holders and other secured debt holders and, in some cases, to the people who owned the foreclosed homes.
  
  Galyon admitted to participating in the conspiracy in Fulton County between June 2007 and at least July 2011. Anderson admitted to participating in the conspiracy in Fulton County between December 2007 and October 2011 and in DeKalb County between September 2009 and November 2011.
  
  Including Galyon and Anderson, twenty-two defendants have been charged in connection with the department’s ongoing investigation into bid rigging and fraudulent schemes involving real estate foreclosure auctions in the Atlanta area. Twenty of those have either pleaded guilty or agreed to plead guilty.
  
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  Anyone with information concerning bid rigging or fraud related to public real estate foreclosure auctions should contact the Washington Criminal II Section of the Antitrust Division at 202-598-4000, call the Antitrust Division’s Citizen Complaint Center at 888-647-3258 or visit http://www.justice.gov/atr/report-violations.

Source: Two Real Estate Investors Plead Guilty to Rigging Bids at Public Home Foreclosure Auctions (22 Defendants Charged in Ongoing Investigation).