This land is my land

Commercial real estate developer and mortgage broker Bradley Holcom today (November 10) was sentenced to ten years and one month in prison for orchestrating a $50 million securities fraud scheme that preyed on 150 persons, many of them elderly. Many of the senior citizens were in the courtroom — some sobbing that they had lost their retirement money.

Holcom solicited investors to provide funds for development of raw land through his so-called Trust Deed Investment Program. He told investors they would have a lien on the land and the lien would be in first position. But investors never got a lien on the property he was supposed to be developing, and only got a lesser interest that did not permit them to directly foreclose on the property to protect their investment.