FBI raids Scottsdale financial firm

A hard-money lending firm specializing in commercial real estate was shut down for several hours on Tuesday after the FBI served it with a sealed search warrant.

Some employees of Remington Capital Inc. of Scottsdale were at times sequestered in the firm's lobby while roughly a dozen FBI agents, some in bulletproof vests, collected company records and documents as evidence. Its headquarters is on Raintree Drive east of Loop 101 in the Raintree Corporate Center.

The premise for the warrant was unavailable and will remain so until the document is unsealed by a federal judge, said Brenda Nath, an FBI spokeswoman. "We can't give any other information," Nath said.


She said the warrant does not necessarily mean that the firm is or will be under federal investigation.

Hard-money lending firms offer alternative financing options, at much higher interest rates and service fees, to projects in which traditional financial institutions deem too risky to invest. Such firms have been under scrutiny since the real-estate crash a few years ago.

A spokeswoman for the office of Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne said the agency was unable to disclose whether staff members were investigating Remington. Jon Hamel of Cavan Property Management said Remington Capital has been a tenant for about a year.

Company officials were unavailable for comment.

In Arizona Corporation Commission records, Andrew Bogdanoff is listed as the president of Remington Capital Inc., which was founded in 1993 and specializes in securing domestic and international commercial-real-estate financing for its clients.

Other Remington executives listed on its website include Shayne Fowler, chief operating officer and managing partner; Donavon Ostrom, head of Remington's Capital Markets Group; and Tyler Hufford, managing director of operations.

Bogdanoff was listed as the owner of Remington Financial Group Inc., which also lists the Raintree Corporate Center as its office location on its website.

In 2008, Remington Financial and a related firm, BlueStone Real Estate Capital, were reported by the Wall Street Journal to be under investigation by the FBI and securities regulators in California and Philadelphia to determine whether the firms were accepting service fees without trying to obtain financing for its clients.

Remington also was a defendant in six lawsuits in California Superior Court involving similar accusations, the article said.

No updated information could be immediately found in court records or media reports. Remington denied the accusations, according to the Journal. The firm also has taken a public stance against fraud.

In May 2010, Bogdanoff was cited in a Remington Financial news release that he had alerted the FBI and other agencies that an Internet scam was using his name to obtain information that could be used in ID theft. On Feb. 25, the company changed its name to Remington Capital.

Don Gaffney of Snell & Wilmer in Phoenix represented one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against hard-money lender firm Mortgages Ltd. a few years ago. Generally, problems arise when there are issues with liquidity, he said.

by Kristena Hansen The Arizona Republic Mar. 16, 2011 12:00 AM




FBI raids Scottsdale financial firm