I don't mind sharing our experience. We made a lot of mistakes but hopefully others can benefit from our loss.
We are alleging the following:
We met Humberto Moya (Gino Moya) when they moved into our neighborhood. We went over with brownies and introduced ourselves. Our families became good friends and of course we inquired of each other's occupations. The Moya's told us how 'Gino' was an investor with a successful corporation as well as being a pastor with a master's degree - Vanguard University. He certainly lived the part, nice house, expensive cars, private school for their children, vacations, etc. We had no reason to doubt them.
After a while, Gino approached my husband regarding a possible investment that involved converting an apartment complex into condos. Mr. Moya told us that his corporation already had a real estate contract with the current owner holding the note. My husband went to WA with other possible investors to see this building as well as another building that Mr. Moya had allegedly already converted. We met the owner and everything seemed legit.
Mr. Moya had his friend, Alfredo Padilla of Mission Home Loans come to our home to help us secure financing and Mr. Padilla gave 'Gino' an excellent reference; telling us how he had been involved for years in Mr. Moya's church and how Gino has never disappointed an investor yet.
We were told that we couldn't be on the title as the titles were already in the process of being converted. After a while Mr. Moya then began to mention 'an unstable housing market' and we pressed him about when we could begin to fix up and sell the condos. He continually reassured us that the conversion process was almost complete and we would be ready to fix them up to sell soon. This dragged on for months. Then, Mr. Moya told us that he was forced to sell the investment and relocate our investment to another city. We asked for documentation and he kept promising us that he would have it soon. He told us that our project had incurred huge losses that we would have to absorb BUT...
if we would sign on a new loan for a 1.5 million dollar project, then he was confident that he could recoup our losses. We declined and this is where it goes from bad to worse... We eventually found out that Mr. Moya nor his corporation ever used our money to complete the purchase of the building in question, nor will he show us how he used our money.
I have a large list of possible investors and I have been in contact with some of them. Mr. Moya kept promising us that he would give us payments and make this right but it is our opinion that it was just more stall tactics.
We finally decided that he was not sincere and we turned Humberto Moya aka Gino Moya over to the authorities.
We are still neighbors...