Results tagged “whodunit” from Ron Kaye L.A.

Crime and Punishment:

The Repentance of Nadya Mahdavi and Nasir Shaikh

Judgment Day was finally here

It had taken 18 months to get to this moment.

A lot had happened since city inspectors first cited Nadya Mahdavi for construction without a permit at the house on Haynes Street in my modest Valley tract of single-family homes.

The case snowballed after neighbors figured out that Mahdavi was illegally converting the house into a three-unit tenement that threatened the quality of their lives and the value of their property.

They complained to the city, to Councilman Dennis Zine. They researched property records, they finally got mad enough to walk door-to-door with petitions demanding the city do something about it

That's how I got involved and started asking questions. I wanted to help, I wanted to know who was killing my neighborhood.

Was it just a greedy landlord trying to get more than $5,000 in rent by converting a 2,000-square-foot house into three units, each with its own kitchen and bathroom, 12 rooms in all? Or was it the system itself, the city, that was responsible for failing in its duty?

Everyone was a suspect.

The trail led to Chief Inspector Frank Bush and others in the Building and Safety Department, to Zine and his staff and finally to the Van Nuys Courthouse and Deputy City Attorney Don Cocek.

Citations started piling up even as Mahdavi flipped ownership of the house each time a court date approached. The ownership went from Mahdavi's Wall Street Properties to her employee to a company called Fidelity Investment Group which listed her husband Nasir Shaikh as president.

A simple permit problem, an infraction, escalated into a series of charges, misdemeanor crimes subject to fines and jail time, that were filed against Mahdavi, Shaikh and Fidelity Investments.

It took officials a while to unravel the chain of ownership and identify exactly who to hold accountable and for what.

The accused played the system for time, provided misleading information, asked for Public Defenders, didn't have lawyers representing them.

Mahdavi's failure to appear in court led to a warrant for her arrest being issued -- something that took two months to achieve because of the multiple addresses where she might be living.

Authorities' attitudes hardened as the months dragged on. My neighbors adjusted to the irritation of many cars parked at the home on Haynes and the comings and goings of the tenants of the three units.

Finally, 13 months after the first citation, the deconstruction of the house got under way and it was brought back into compliance with the law. It took six more months for Judgment Day to arrive.

Mahdavi and Shaikh were already at court when I arrived yesterday. They didn't look as cocky as they had before. They greeted me with smiles.

A lot had happened in their lives since they bought the house on Haynes. Their marriage had broken up, their high-flying lives had come down to earth as the collapse of the housing market cost them dearly, unraveling their various property schemes.

Encino attorney Gerald Cobb had worked out a deal with Cocek: Fidelity would plead guilty to three counts, Mahdavi and Shaikh would plead no contest to two counts each. They would be fined just under $10,000 and pay $1,500 in investigative fees. They would be on probation for a year and if they stay out of trouble and pay the fine, the charges will be reduced on their record from misdemeanors to infractions.

It was just before noon when they were called to appear before Commissioner Thomas E. Grodin who had imposed his own condition on the plea bargain: Each of the defendants was required to write a 1,000-word essay of contrition for him to consider at sentencing.

Mahdavi's essay ended this way:

"I would just like to state that I am extremely grateful for being given an opportunity to resolve this case. I sincerely appreciate and am appalled by the kindness and generosity displayed by the People and the City in respect to not placing a damaging note on my record. The People have been very patient and generous with me and I do not deserve such mercy. I assure you that this will never happen again."

I'm sure she didn't mean to use the word "appalled" but she was late getting her essay to Grodin who was not amused and found both their essays "self-serving...barely made it." Grodin lectured them, awarding a grade of D to Mahdavi and C-minus to Shaikh.

"I was not terribly impressed ...frankly, with either one."

As we left the courthouse, Cocek said all the information he had gathered was turned over to the state Department of Real Estate.

"If they screw-up again, they will lose their licenses," he said.

The case was closed.

My neighborhood is as safe and tranquil as ever. The suspects were identified and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

The system worked, if slowly. The inspectors, Cocek, the court system had done their jobs well and honorably.

But I couldn't help wondering how much my own role might have changed the course of events, the exposure of the case for all the world to see causing officials to spend far more time on it than was usual.

In her letter to Grodin, Mahdavi acknowledges how that affected her: "The humiliation and disgrace I have felt from being portrayed as a criminal and the harassment I have received through internet exposure has caused such a terrible impact on me and my family"

In the grand scheme of things, this was a small matter.

There are thousands of more serious violations of housing codes going undetected all over the city, especially in poorer areas.

Building and Safety is grossly understaffed and taking a bigger hit in the city budget crisis with our elected officials gutting funds for code enforcement to protect jobs that facilitate developers moving ahead on new projects that generate revenue.

So who is killing our neighborhoods?

There's a lot people like Mahdavi and Shaikh who do stupid and greedy things. Only the few are caught and punished despite the efforts of people like Frank Bush, Don Cocek and Judge Grodin to protect us. Usually, it takes the neighborhoods themselves to bring these problems to their attention and persist until they get action.

The same cannot be said for the city's leadership.

Throughout the current budget process, they have only talked about how to bring in more revenue to the city -- not how to preserve the neighborhoods or the quality of life for the residents.

Laws for our protection are haphazardly enforced and resources are expended to get developments approved faster and faster even though the infrastructure is deteriorating and inadequate for our needs.

Whodunit? It's really not a mystery.

Read the full text of Mahdavi's essay:

Justice delayed due to faulty machinery, mechanical -- bureaucratic

Chelsea Cody
OurLA.org Writer

"There will be no more continuances. This is the last one." said Commissioner Thomas Grodin before dismissing Nasir Shaikh, his new attorney Monica Romallo and ex-wife Nadya Mahdavi's counsel Gerald Cobb from the courtroom to discuss a settlement plan with Deputy City Attorney Donald Cocek. 

After a long day of delayed hearings due to malfunctioning public elevators at the Van Nuys courthouse, Commissioner Grodin was short on patience.

The court waited for over an hour and a half for Shaikh to appear and Mahdavi was not present as her attorney advised her that her appearance would not be necessary.

Grudgingly granting a continuance, Grodin said all parties involved had better come to some kind of settlement or be prepared to go to trial come July 14.

More than a year of delays and difficulties has prolonged the case of the People of Los Angeles vs. Shaikh and Mahdavi. Pleas of poverty, denials of ownership and failure to appear before the court (with or without an attorney) have postponed any final decision. Yesterday it was malfunctioning machinery.

Resolving the illegal conversion of a single-family home into a three-apartment tenement on 19953 Haynes St. in Woodland Hills has dragged on since the beginning of 2008 only to be delayed - one hopes - one last time.

That is, if the city can keep the elevators working.

A plea of poverty: "I'm saying is there is no money"

Finally, the Day of Reckoning for the people accused of killing my neighborhood -- April Fool's!

Thirteen months after Nadya Mahdavi was first cited for construction without a permit and began converting a house in my single-family tract into a three-unit tenement, she and her now ex-husband Nasir Shaikh were supposed to face the strong arm of the law and go to trial Wednesday.

But as has happened time after time, they found a way to postpone their date with LA's justice system.

Shaikh had stalled the case for months by denying he was a principal of Fidelity Investments Group which bought the house from his secretary Claudia Perez who bought the house from his wife -- all in the space of six months last year.

On Wednesday, his excuse was he's so poor that he can't afford a lawyer so he stood before Commissioner Thomas E. Grodin in Van Nuys Court Department 121 and asked for an attorney to be provided him at taxpayer expense.

His vow of poverty got him a stern lecture from Grodin but it did buy a delay until April 30, much as his wife's flipping ownership of the house, failure to appear in court and her own pleas of poverty had gotten them a long string of continuances.

There was no discussion of the $40,000 or so the couple has gotten in rent on the house that has caused my neighbors so much distress but there was considerable talk about the four houses owned by Fidelity Investments, some of which have Building and Safety issues now being investigated.

Assistant City Attorney tracked down the four properties and put their assessed value at about $3 million with one valued at just under $1 million.

Shaikh insisted the properties are all "under water" and he can't afford child support so he needs a lawyer. He was supposed to bring income tax and other financial records but offered the court only a few pay stubs.

"All the properties are upside down. . .what I'm saying is there is no money,'' Shaikh said.

Grodin was unimpressed: ""I told you last time you were supposed to come with an attorney. You told my bailiff you had an attorney."

When Shaikh disputed that, Grodin turned on him: "His word is good. What's going on is you're speaking out of both sides of your mouth . . . I can't appoint a lawyer for you at government expense."

At that point, Shaikh talked out of the side of his mouth that communicated his desire to represent himself. "I would like to go pro per."

In the meantime, the deconstruction of the tenement at 19953 Haynes St. in Woodland Hills is going on with kitchens going out and interior walls going in and one of the three tenants leaving. Soon, it is likely to look like a single family home again on the inside although the law does not proscribe how many people actually live in such a dwelling.

The investigation of the property dealings of Shaikh and Mahdavi are expanding to the various companies they set up and their employees but there is no indication whether anyone will take a hard look at how these transactions were put together and financed.

Mahdavi's attorney, Gerald Cobb, indicated to the court that the house on Haynes will soon be in compliance with the law.

As is usual in these cases, compliance is prosecutor Cocek's No. 1 goal.

But these are criminal charges, four misdemeanors carrying penalties of up to six months in jail and $1,000 fines each, and it remains to be seen how it will play out in the end.

Will my neighbors feel justice was served and the punishment fit the crime?

Will they see compliance with the law as the proper resolution to the year of aggravation, the year of worrying that their neighborhood, their property, would go down the road to becoming a slum like so much of LA

Will they accept that the economic meltdown that appears to have robbed Mahdavi and Shaikh of their dreams of wealth as a fitting end to the story?

The verdict and sentencing in this case -- a rare one that has become publicly visible -- will tell us a lot about whether it's people like Mahdavi and Shaikh who are killing our neighborhoods or whether it's the city itself, its policies, its laws, its enforcement that are the real criminals.

A "ridiculously reasonable" plea bargain proposal

Trying to solve the mystery of who's killing my neighborhood has consumed a lot of my time and energy for the past eight months but I'm realizing that a detective's lot is not the stuff that of Sherlock Holmes or even Sam Spade.

You ask dumb questions and get dumb answers and you think you got the suspect nailed so you sit in court for hours a time half listening to the sorry tales of petty crimes and petty punishments.

I don't know how cops or prosecutors or judges or even city Building and Safety inspectors do it. It's a job, I guess.

We're at the one year anniversary of when my neighbors noticed odd goings-on at the house on Haynes Street in what I call Lower Woodland Hills, a notch of modest tract homes north of Victory Boulevard that went up in the late 1950s. I've lived here for more than two decades, some neighbors since the tract was built.

So when work crews started turning the house on Haynes into three apartments, three kitchens, three bathrooms and a dozen or so rooms overall, it was a cause of concern -- a threat to their sense of place, to the value of their property, their security, the quality of their lives, a sign of the times of the deterioration of our neighborhoods.

Building and Safety issued the first citation for construction without a permit 11 months ago. More citations followed and finally misdemeanor criminal charges but the house's ownership kept getting flipped, the suspect list clouded, hearings continued.

And finally Wednesday, it looked like the case might actually go to trial. But it didn't.

Instead, attorney Gerald Cobb showed up with Nasir Shaikh, who along with his wife Nadya Mahdavi, are accused of four counts involving the illegal conversion of the house on Haynes into a tenement. It was only last month that Shaikh was charged when state records showed he was the CEO of Fidelity Investments Groups, which owns the house bought out of foreclosure in January 2008 by Mahdavi and "sold" to her employee in May and then to Fidelity two months later.

The kitchen in the garage apartment was removed last week along with the wall separating it from one of other apartments, Cobb told Assistant City Attorney Don Cocek. Mahdavi's father was a long-time client and a good man, he said, not "greedy and disrespectful," and wanted to restore the tenement to being a single-family home to legal status with rooms that opened up to each other. The tenant in the garage could stay legally, he noted, because there's a carport.

But there was a problem.

American Justice: Smokers, the con man and the quality of our lives

Once again Wednesday, I found myself sitting in Department 101 of the Van Nuys Municipal Court to observe the case of the People of Los Angeles vs. Nadya Mahdavi and Fidelity Investments LLC who are accused in a criminal complaint of illegally converting a single-family house in my tract into a three-apartment tenement.

She was standing in the hallway chatting on her cell phone and smiled sweetly at me as I headed into the courtroom. She was there to finally enter a plea to the four misdemeanor charges dating back nine months to when the Building and Safety Department first cited her  for construction without a permit.

As the citations grew in number and finally turned into criminal charges, Mahdavi had managed to avoid even getting to the point of entering a plea,  first by failing to appear, then appearing without a lawyer and then getting a continuance.

Assistant City Attorney Don Cocek assured me she wouldn't get another delay.

So I sat in court and listened to case after case of people facing everything from petty theft to drug charges to building code violations to spousal abuse.

Muncipal courts are fascinating, the place where ordinary people come against the law with little chance of escaping the consequences.

Nancy Johnson and Nzinga Owolo, like most of the defendants, found there was no alternative to pleading guilty to the crime they were accused of: Smoking in the park.

"Cigarettes?" I asked Johnson.

"Yes," she said, "my cousin and I went to Balboa Park to fish, for tilapia mostly, and we lit up cigarettes and we're just talking when the ranger came up and wrote us up."

Johnson and Owolo pleaded guilty and were fined $30 each. But the court costs raised their penalty to $250 each because smoking in the park is a misdemeanor crime, not just an infraction, so the fees are high and they now have criminal records which makes those fish they were catching pretty expensive.

"It's crap" Johnson said. "Ridiculous  There's no signs posted. We went around the park and took pictures but nobody cares. They just want your money."

A Day in Court: The Suspect

Chapter Four: Zine's cop-out

Much of city government took days off in advance of the holiday so I was lucky to run into Councilman Dennis Zine who had the first shot at stopping the illegal conversion of a single family house in my neighborhood into a three-unit apartment building

It was Thursday night and I was a guest on "Primetime Zine," the councilman's monthly talk show hosted by Lee Kanan Alpert on Time Warner Cable's public access channel. The invitation came before I found out Zine was one of the suspects in the mystery of who was killing my neighborhood.

With American flags flying from atop his SUV, Zine pulled into the Time Warner Cable parking lot and strutted up to me with two aides in tow. He wore an American flag tie, had an American flag lapel pin and carried a flag in his hand and was in the mood for a fight, if not a revolution.

I told him I was going to bring up the illegal conversion on air, that my neighbors were frustrated that neither he nor other city officials seem to take the issue very seriously and were so upset they were signing petitions.

"You're wrong. They have a permit," he snapped, insisting his staff did all it could by referring my neighbors' complaint back in March to the Department of Building and Safety. (My neighbor, a retired doctor, doesn't share that point of view, having spent hours waiting in Zine's office in a futile effort to actually talk to the councilman).

They have a permit to illegally convert a house into an apartment? And all you did was refer the complaint to Building and Safety?

"It's right here in the Building and Safety files," he said, waving printouts downloaded by a staffer. "We looked into it today and it's all perfectly legal. You're wrong."

What ensued was a heated discussion between two people who have had a lot of heated arguments over the years but still get along in a funny sort or way given the volatile nature of their personalities.

Chapter Three: Westside Rentals

One of the mysteries that befuddled me about this case was how a single-family house became three apartments with six bedrooms, four bathrooms, three kitchens and a studio apartment. In 2,047 square feet. With a combined rental asking price of $5,500.

No, it's not exactly solving the affordable housing problem but it does prove people can live in incredibly small spaces like ants.

My investigation took me to Westside Rentals, the company with the sign in front of the illegal conversion that's threatening the well-being of Tract 17111, my neighborhood.

If you believe the L.A. Times, Westside Rentals provides a great service to the public and is a very successful business allowing landlords to put up listings free and charging prospective tenants $60 to see them. In a story on May 2 under the headline "How I Made It," the Times informed us that owner Mark Verge's Santa Monica-based company employs "80 people and lists about 20,000 apartments, houses and rooms for rent."

No mention is made that at least three of those listings at the time were for an illegal conversion that had been cited by the Department of Building and Safety for construction without a permit

Verge said his first big purchase when he got rich with his westsiderentals.com website was a $50,000 race horse named "Hide from the Bride" and he dreams of doing a reality TV show called "Rental Man" His motivation for getting into the rental listing business was pretty idealistic: "The business had a really bad name to it."

Since he is an idealist who advises "Meet everyone and treat them all the same" I figured I'd give him a call and see if he could take me through how the owners of this house found two tenants already and are looking for a third for the big unit, three bedrooms, two baths, $2,095 a month -- a $400 drop in the original asking price.

I asked to talk to Verge , explaining I was a journalist, and was immediately put through to Kevin Miller, head of operations, who was cordial and open about the fact the company is merely a go-between. Landlords put up their listings, people search the listings, contact the landlord and decide whether to rent the house or apartment.

"It's all their own business," he said. "We don't get involved at all."

I noted the contract people agree to when signing up is extremely long and detailed and frees Westside of all responsibility. So what happens when there are complaints, I asked.

"We don't get involved in that. It's all 'he said,' 'she said.' You got to take it with a grain of salt. We're not the police."

I caught up with the neighbor lady Monday. It was hot, like only the Valley can be, when I walked to the corner and took a look at the house illegally converted into apartments.

There was a guy who didn't look all that healthy trying to get his car started in the driveway and sign in front: For Rent, Westside Rentals. I wrote down the phone number.

As I talked with my neighbor I looked around her house. It was filled with memories and memorabilia of the 50 years she and husband had lived there. A good life, the house they raised their children in and sometimes look after their grandchildren in now. It was home, she said, and I knew what she meant.

I hadn't had a home, a real home, since I was 18 until I moved into Tract 17111 as it's identified in government documents. For my wife and I and our son, our little bungalow was home, too, a happy home. It's what the Valley is all about, middle-class tracts like ours where neighbors know each other and look after each other, where people from all over the world, people of every race and religion live quietly and unpretentiously, in harmony.

And someone was trying to destroy that, infecting a deadly virus, a broken window, into our little piece of paradise. It's a crime these things are happening.

That's certainly how my neighbor feels about this. She was calm but clear as she described her frustration over months to get this attack on our way of life stopped by the city, by Councilman Dennis Zine's office, by somebody. But to the city it was nothing but a minor annoyance, just a routine "unapproved construction" problem -- no an attack on the quality of our lives, our neighborhood.

She and some other neighbors got the runaround from Zine's office and the bureaucrats for weeks as they tried to figure out how to get somebody to do something.

Finally, they drew up a petition that says in part:: "This community and others like it will not exist if investor-buyers succeed in violating zoning laws to create multiple family dwellings in single family dweIling zones and utilize schemes such as deliberate re-sales to associates, friends, and/or family, in order to delay government action."

I was hooked. Foul play was alleged. I loved the idea of playing a journalistic Columbo right in my own backyard but as we talked I learned my neighbor already had the part of Mrs. Columbo down pat.

Chapter One

I'd suspected something was amiss for a while but until I heard the knock on the door I looked the other way like everybody else.

It was Saturday and there was a neighbor lady standing there. She held a piece of paper in her hand.

"Do you know what's happened?"

Bruno was going crazy, yowling and lunging at the screen door with the full force of that giant head of his, 60 pounds of pit bull/shar-pei fury. Damn, I wish my wife had never taken him in from the bushes just because she thought he'd kill somebody.

"Shut up, Bruno," I yelled to no avail.

The woman was unfazed.

"You know that house they turned into a board-and-care facility five, six years ago. The one at the corner? It's been converted into three apartments with kitchens and baths. It's illegal. Did you see who's moving in? We can't get the city to do anything ."

I perked up. This was my beat. I stepped outside, yelled at Bruno one more time and said: "You've knocked on the right door, ma'm. My name is Ron. Maybe I can help."

She and another lady were going door to door with petitions. They'd been trying for months. It's an illegal conversion. It's got to be stopped.

I got the picture clear enough. Our tract of modest bungalows on the Valley floor was threatened. Quiet streets, no through traffic, no crime, nice people. The only time we see a cop is when our next door neighbor comes by.

"I'm busy," I told her. "We'll talk."

To be continued....