SACRAMENTO (CBS SF) — Jeff Carpoff, owner of Benicia-based DC Solar, was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison Tuesday in a billion-dollar Ponzi scheme that he used to finance luxury homes and automobiles, the purchase of a minor league baseball team and a sponsorship of a NASCAR team.
Acting U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert called the case one of the biggest criminal fraud schemes in San Francisco Bay Area history
Carpoff pleaded guilty in January to federal conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering charges. His wife, Paulette, also has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and money laundering and faces a maximum statutory penalty of 15 years in prison when she is sentenced.
The government’s investigation has resulted in approximately $120 million in assets forfeited that the government intends to seek authorization to use towards restitution to victims of the fraud.
According to court documents, between 2011 and 2018, DC Solar manufactured mobile solar generator units, which were solar generators that were mounted on trailers and were promoted as able to provide emergency power to cellphone towers and lighting at sporting events.
A significant incentive for investors were generous federal tax credits due to the solar nature of the project.
But investigators said Carpoff and his fellow conspirators sold solar generators that did not exist to the investors, making it appear that they existed in locations that they did not, creating false financial statements and obtaining false lease contracts. In reality, at least half of the approximately 17,000 solar generators claimed to have been manufactured by DC Solar did not exist.
“Jeff Carpoff orchestrated the largest criminal fraud scheme in the history of the Eastern District of California,” Talbert added. “He claimed to be an innovator in alternative energy, but he was really just stealing money from investors and costing the American taxpayer hundreds of millions in tax credits.”
The forfeiture associated with the case included seizing and auctioning 148 of the Carpoffs’ luxury and collector vehicles, including the 1978 Firebird previously owned by actor Burt Reynolds. This historical auction resulted in recouping approximately $8.233 million.
In addition to their collection of luxury and collector vehicles, Jeff and Paulette Carpoff used money from the scheme to pay for a minor-league professional baseball team and a NASCAR racecar sponsorship; to purchase luxury real estate in California, Nevada, the Caribbean, Mexico, and elsewhere; a subscription private jet service; a suite at a professional football stadium and jewelry.
“Mr. Carpoff lived a luxurious life as a successful businessman,” said Special Agent in Charge Mark H. Pearson. “In reality, he manipulated the system to his advantage by lying to investors, promising significant federal tax credits, and laundering his ill-gotten gains.”
In addition to the Carpoffs, five other defendants have been charged with criminal offenses related to the fraud scheme.
Joseph W. Bayliss, 46, of Martinez, and Ronald J. Roach, 54, of Walnut Creek, each pleaded guilty to related charges on Oct. 22, 2019. Bayliss is scheduled for sentencing on Nov. 16 and Roach is scheduled for sentencing on Feb. 15, 2022.
Robert A. Karmann, 54, of Clayton, pleaded guilty to related charges on Dec. 17, 2019; and Ryan Guidry, 44, of Pleasant Hill, pleaded guilty to related charges on Jan. 14, 2020.
Alan Hansen, 50, of Vacaville, a former employee of a telecom company with which DC Solar purported to do business, pleaded guilty in July to participating in the fraud scheme and accepting a $1 million bribe to sign a false contract.
Karmann, Guidry, and Hansen are scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 14, 2021.
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — The return of city employees this week in San Francisco could have an immediate impact on rents in the city.
Rents dropped 12% year over year during the summer of 2020 as workers no longer chained to the office fled their highrises in Downtown San Francisco. If you’re one of those who left, but might be thinking of returning, now may be the time to do it.
Carl Ek is one of those workers who left the city and even the state.
He lived in a San Francisco penthouse, but left to move to Detroit and eventually to his home country of Canada.
“I was always drawn to live in that city but when the pandemic hit, a lot of things were taken away,” he said.
Carl is now working remotely for a company based in San Francisco.
He says if his boss made him return, he wouldn’t hesitate to do it because leaving wasn’t easy.
“When you see it in your rearview mirror, you realize and it’s getting smaller and smaller, ‘oh, man, did I do the right thing? No,’ and you keep driving on,” said Carl.
Brian Carberry monitors rents as editor of Rent.com.
He says if you’re planning to return to the city, you should lock in a long-term lease now.
“Save some money in the long haul, and really get something that’s more affordable compared to waiting three months from now when prices might be up $5-600 in certain areas,” the Rent.Com editor said.
He says a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is going to cost about $3300, up 14% from the same time last year.
Still that’s slightly cheaper than Oakland.
“At least for right now, you got value in San Francisco where as in Oakland, you’re going to spend and pay a lot more.”
“Reallly now is the time to act. If you wait even a month, you could see those prices go up several hundred dollars in certain neighborhoods,” said Carberry.
He adds that the cheapest big city Bay Area rents right now are in San Jose where rents are about $1,000 cheaper than San Francisco and Oakland.
A sales price wasn’t disclosed; however, the property had been listed for $68 million.
“I have a great love for our state’s ranching heritage, and have long been committed to preserving ranch lands in California,” Brown said in an emailed statement to The Chronicle. “It is humbling to be able to purchase this historic ranch, and I consider it an honor to preserve its future, protect the land and watersheds, and maintain this amazing property.”
The sprawling N3 Ranch, located in Livermore, spans canyons, trout streams, meadows and oak woodlands in four counties — Santa Clara, Alameda, San Joaquin and Stanislaus — and encompasses 4,089-foot Eylar Mountain as well as a slice of Mission Peak. It is viewed as a tract of rare wilderness in the greater Bay Area, with an area nearly twice the size of San Francisco that stretches from the Del Valle Reservoir to Tracy and between Calaveras and San Antonio reservoirs. It provides range for mountain lions, bobcats, foxes and a herd of elk.
The property was listed for $72 million in summer 2019 by the heirs of a cattle ranching family from Southern California that had owned it for 85 years but hadn’t grazed it for some time.
Conservationists and public land agencies took an immediate interest, touting the property’s wild character and ideal location at the intersection of several open space areas as the perfect centerpiece of the state’s next outdoor recreation destination. It would have amounted to the largest property addition to state parks in 70 years.
“It’s pristine wildlands, important Bay Area watershed, and it could provide extraordinary passive recreation opportunities on trails and hills,” state Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda, told The Chronicle last year. “This is not something in the foothills of the Sierras. This is in our backyard.”
That vision was contingent on a coalition of interested entities — public land managers, foundations, water districts and counties — pooling their resources to match the listing price. For a while, it appeared that endeavor was on course; Gov. Gavin Newsom even appropriated $20 million in his 2020 budget to help cover the cost.
But this week, that effort officially fell through.
Glazer, a fervent proponent of the parkland concept, acknowledged the collapse in an email.
“I’m disappointed that we were not able to acquire this special property,” Glazer said, “but we will not be deterred in our enduring mission to purchase and protect Bay Area open space lands for the benefit of nature and the enjoyment of our residents.”
The California Department of Parks and Recreation wrote in an email to The Chronicle that it “remains committed to establish a new state park in California,” one that “will be inclusive and support equitable access for all Californians.”
The property’s broker, California Outdoor Properties owner Todd Renfrow, said the ranchland had received “a ton of interest” in the past two years. He called Brown’s intent to keep the property undeveloped “a win-win for everybody.”
The N3 ranch in the East Bay has been sold to Bill Brown, the founder and board chairman of Walnut Creek wholesaler Central Garden and Pet Co.
California Outdoor Properties
N3 has 14 hunting camps with cabins, a four-bedroom main residence, employee cabins, and some barns and outbuildings, but it is unlikely to be developed further. The property is covered by the 1965 Williamson Act, which gives owners a property tax break in exchange for preserving an area as farmland and open space.
Brown bought the bulk of the N3 Ranch via the William Brown Foundation, which he formed in August. It is “dedicated to conservation and preservation,” according to the statement provided to The Chronicle. The purchase ensures “the ranch’s protection from urban encroachment and future development while preserving the ranch’s diverse ecosystem.”
As a private citizen, Brown bought a small piece of the property where the ranch’s headquarters and a small home are located.
“I spent a great deal of my youth on my grandfather’s cattle ranch, which helped shape me as a person,” Brown said in his statement. “It is our hope that future generations will have similar experiences to mine and, by being close to nature, they will fully appreciate the need to preserve our open space.”
Gregory Thomas is The San Francisco Chronicle’s editor of lifestyle and outdoors. Email: gthomas@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @GregRThomas
But at a Board of Supervisors land use committee meeting in June 2020, Supervisor Dean Preston persuaded his colleagues to delay the Planning Department’s move to rezone the 15 parcels for more density.
The changes would allow an additional 1,300 housing units on the land, including 350 affordable ones, on top of the thousands that are already OKd. Planners recommended the committee approve the rezoning because no developer would move forward in the middle of the process without clarity about how many units could be built.
But at Preston’s urging, the committee decided the city should first conduct an equity study of the ramifications of allowing more housing on the parcels.
“We will allow no more than six months for its completion,” Preston said then.
A homeless encampment near the US Foods Chef’s Store off of South Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco.
Brontë Wittpenn/The Chronicle
But nearly a year and a half later, no such equity study exists. And no progress toward building housing on the 15 parcels has been made.
It found that since his inauguration in December 2019, the progressive tenants rights attorney and activist has opposed development plans and legislative proposals — at the city and state level — that could have yielded enough units to house more than 28,000 people — including enough affordable housing for nearly 8,500 people. That total includes his opposition to a state law that could have potentially added homes for almost 20,000 people in his district.
In those cases, the outcome didn’t hinge on Preston’s vote — but counting the number of units he opposed is an important part of his record nonetheless.
For other projects, such as the Hub lots, his actions directly changed the outcome. In those examples, Preston blocked or delayed enough units to house 8,587 people — or, on average, 12 people per day since taking office, the report said. The vast majority of those come from the Hub project; the majority of units could technically proceed now, but won’t, as the rezoning process drags on and developers await firm answers.
Some of the projects listed in the report could eventually be built — like the Hub and the infamous transformation of a Nordstrom valet lot near Sixth and Market streets — and could conceivably be made better because of the delays. But there’s real concern that San Francisco city leaders aren’t approving nearly enough housing in their quest for the perfect project.
The report’s authors — all members of local YIMBY groups that support building more housing for people of all income levels — started with Preston because they believe he’s “the worst offender” and because they’re all either current or former residents of Preston’s District Five. The report authors will look at the housing records of each supervisor, and this column will cover each one.
I shared the report with Preston, who called it “one-sided” and “make-believe.”
“Reading it is like a children’s fantasy book, sort of like Alice in YIMBY Land,” he quipped.
San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston speaks last month in the Fillmore district during an event to prevent evictions.
Preston said he’s voted in support of more than 5,000 housing units, 39% of them affordable, since taking office, citing developments at the Potrero Power Station and Balboa Reservoir, among others. He added that he’s “one of the leading advocates in the state” on tenant rights and affordable housing.
Asked about Preston’s housing record and his approach to the Hub project, Jeff Cretan, spokesperson for Mayor London Breed, said that repeatedly delaying projects has real impacts.
“When housing gets pushed back because of lack of political will or appeals or bureaucracy, that means years of people not having homes,” Cretan said. “It means years of everyone else seeing their housing prices continue to rise. It means years where more people who grew up here can’t find housing and are forced out of the city.”
To be clear, those delays aren’t all on the back of Preston. He’s in good company among supervisors thwarting needed housing creation — just look at the recent 8-3 vote to quash 495 units of housing, 24% of them affordable, on the Nordstrom valet parking lot on Stevenson Street.
One of the report’s authors, David Broockman, an associate professor of political science at UC Berkeley, said his deep dive into Preston’s housing record turned up repeated excuses the supervisor gave for not supporting projects, even those with a high percentage of affordable units.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people in the Bay Area who need housing, and they can’t wait for the hypothetical perfect housing he seems to have in mind to fall out of the sky,” Broockman said. “No matter what housing is proposed, he always finds a reason to say it’s not good enough.”
Broockman lives on the edge of District Five, on the east end of Page Street, and said he could only afford a home there because of a mortgage assistance program he accessed through his job. He moved from Texas, where he was bullied for being gay, and laments that San Francisco’s housing shortage and resulting exorbitant prices mean the city is a refuge for fewer people.
Broockman and a couple of friends got the idea for the report after seeing the supervisor trolling YIMBYs on Twitter, their favored social platform. Preston often tells those who support more housing of all types that they’re misrepresenting his record — that he is pro-housing, he just wants it to be affordable.
“He tweets a lot. He kept saying, ‘Look at my record. Look at my record,’” said Vitor Baccetti, another of the report authors, who immigrated from Brazil five years ago to work in the tech industry. “So we did.”
Broockman, Baccetti and a couple of other volunteers spent their free time since February plumbing planning documents, watching meetings and making public records requests in a bid to detail Preston’s housing votes and positions.
There was his vote on the Nordstrom valet lot. There was his push to stall the sale of a Japantown hotel to the city so it could become permanent supportive housing for more than 100 homeless people; the hotel owner backed out of the deal, and it will remain a destination for tourists. There was his vote against turning a Divisadero Street gas station and car wash into 186 units, including 36 affordable ones.
Then there was Preston’s opposition to the expansion of the UCSF hospital and research facility on Parnassus Heights, which would add 1,263 housing units, about 40% of them priced below market rate. The UC Board of Regents approved the plan anyway, but they’ve been sued by a variety of community groups allied with Preston, including the Yerba Buena Neighborhood Consortium, run by John Elberling. He also runs TODCO, the powerful affordable housing owner that successfully appealed the approval of the project on the Nordstrom lot.
As for the Hub, Preston and the other land use committee members did allow three different parcels with more firmed-up development plans to proceed. TODCO and other community groups had made agreements with those developers in advance, including paying for affordable housing off site, and supported the rezoning, Elberling told me.
But Preston and the other supervisors, Aaron Peskin and Ahsha Safaí, halted the other 15 parcels for the equity study. That study was supposed to be led by Elberling and TODCO and completed by December 2020.
Elberling said TODCO would receive no money from the city to conduct the study and had hired a Southern California consulting firm to complete it.
“The consultant couldn’t finish it, and we put it aside due to COVID,” he said, adding that TODCO will find a new consultant to complete the study. Expect it, he said, sometime in 2022.
In the meantime, the 15 lots will remain just the way they are. Unattractive, underused and a stark reminder of why the city’s housing crisis persists.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf
But at a Board of Supervisors land use committee meeting in June 2020, Supervisor Dean Preston persuaded his colleagues to delay the Planning Department’s move to rezone the 15 parcels for more density.
The changes would allow an additional 1,300 housing units on the land, including 350 affordable ones, on top of the thousands that are already OKd. Planners recommended the committee approve the rezoning because no developer would move forward in the middle of the process without clarity about how many units could be built.
But at Preston’s urging, the committee decided the city should first conduct an equity study of the ramifications of allowing more housing on the parcels.
“We will allow no more than six months for its completion,” Preston said then.
A homeless encampment near the US Foods Chef’s Store off of South Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco.
Brontë Wittpenn/The Chronicle
But nearly a year and a half later, no such equity study exists. And no progress toward building housing on the 15 parcels has been made.
It found that since his inauguration in December 2019, the progressive tenants rights attorney and activist has opposed development plans and legislative proposals — at the city and state level — that could have yielded enough units to house more than 28,000 people — including enough affordable housing for nearly 8,500 people. That total includes his opposition to a state law that could have potentially added homes for almost 20,000 people in his district.
In those cases, the outcome didn’t hinge on Preston’s vote — but counting the number of units he opposed is an important part of his record nonetheless.
For other projects, such as the Hub lots, his actions directly changed the outcome. In those examples, Preston blocked or delayed enough units to house 8,587 people — or, on average, 12 people per day since taking office, the report said. The vast majority of those come from the Hub project; the majority of units could technically proceed now, but won’t, as the rezoning process drags on and developers await firm answers.
Some of the projects listed in the report could eventually be built — like the Hub and the infamous transformation of a Nordstrom valet lot near Sixth and Market streets — and could conceivably be made better because of the delays. But there’s real concern that San Francisco city leaders aren’t approving nearly enough housing in their quest for the perfect project.
The report’s authors — all members of local YIMBY groups that support building more housing for people of all income levels — started with Preston because they believe he’s “the worst offender” and because they’re all either current or former residents of Preston’s District Five. The report authors will look at the housing records of each supervisor, and this column will cover each one.
I shared the report with Preston, who called it “one-sided” and “make-believe.”
“Reading it is like a children’s fantasy book, sort of like Alice in YIMBY Land,” he quipped.
San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston speaks last month in the Fillmore district during an event to prevent evictions.
Preston said he’s voted in support of more than 5,000 housing units, 39% of them affordable, since taking office, citing developments at the Potrero Power Station and Balboa Reservoir, among others. He added that he’s “one of the leading advocates in the state” on tenant rights and affordable housing.
Asked about Preston’s housing record and his approach to the Hub project, Jeff Cretan, spokesperson for Mayor London Breed, said that repeatedly delaying projects has real impacts.
“When housing gets pushed back because of lack of political will or appeals or bureaucracy, that means years of people not having homes,” Cretan said. “It means years of everyone else seeing their housing prices continue to rise. It means years where more people who grew up here can’t find housing and are forced out of the city.”
To be clear, those delays aren’t all on the back of Preston. He’s in good company among supervisors thwarting needed housing creation — just look at the recent 8-3 vote to quash 495 units of housing, 24% of them affordable, on the Nordstrom valet parking lot on Stevenson Street.
One of the report’s authors, David Broockman, an associate professor of political science at UC Berkeley, said his deep dive into Preston’s housing record turned up repeated excuses the supervisor gave for not supporting projects, even those with a high percentage of affordable units.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people in the Bay Area who need housing, and they can’t wait for the hypothetical perfect housing he seems to have in mind to fall out of the sky,” Broockman said. “No matter what housing is proposed, he always finds a reason to say it’s not good enough.”
Broockman lives on the edge of District Five, on the east end of Page Street, and said he could only afford a home there because of a mortgage assistance program he accessed through his job. He moved from Texas, where he was bullied for being gay, and laments that San Francisco’s housing shortage and resulting exorbitant prices mean the city is a refuge for fewer people.
Broockman and a couple of friends got the idea for the report after seeing the supervisor trolling YIMBYs on Twitter, their favored social platform. Preston often tells those who support more housing of all types that they’re misrepresenting his record — that he is pro-housing, he just wants it to be affordable.
“He tweets a lot. He kept saying, ‘Look at my record. Look at my record,’” said Vitor Baccetti, another of the report authors, who immigrated from Brazil five years ago to work in the tech industry. “So we did.”
Broockman, Baccetti and a couple of other volunteers spent their free time since February plumbing planning documents, watching meetings and making public records requests in a bid to detail Preston’s housing votes and positions.
There was his vote on the Nordstrom valet lot. There was his push to stall the sale of a Japantown hotel to the city so it could become permanent supportive housing for more than 100 homeless people; the hotel owner backed out of the deal, and it will remain a destination for tourists. There was his vote against turning a Divisadero Street gas station and car wash into 186 units, including 36 affordable ones.
Then there was Preston’s opposition to the expansion of the UCSF hospital and research facility on Parnassus Heights, which would add 1,263 housing units, about 40% of them priced below market rate. The UC Board of Regents approved the plan anyway, but they’ve been sued by a variety of community groups allied with Preston, including the Yerba Buena Neighborhood Consortium, run by John Elberling. He also runs TODCO, the powerful affordable housing owner that successfully appealed the approval of the project on the Nordstrom lot.
As for the Hub, Preston and the other land use committee members did allow three different parcels with more firmed-up development plans to proceed. TODCO and other community groups had made agreements with those developers in advance, including paying for affordable housing off site, and supported the rezoning, Elberling told me.
But Preston and the other supervisors, Aaron Peskin and Ahsha Safaí, halted the other 15 parcels for the equity study. That study was supposed to be led by Elberling and TODCO and completed by December 2020.
Elberling said TODCO would receive no money from the city to conduct the study and had hired a Southern California consulting firm to complete it.
“The consultant couldn’t finish it, and we put it aside due to COVID,” he said, adding that TODCO will find a new consultant to complete the study. Expect it, he said, sometime in 2022.
In the meantime, the 15 lots will remain just the way they are. Unattractive, underused and a stark reminder of why the city’s housing crisis persists.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf
