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An East Bay home builder who avoided criminal charges when his company was fined in a bank fraud case earlier this year has been charged with retaliating against a witness, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
Albert Seeno III, the owner of Discovery Builders and Albert Seeno Construction Co., appeared in U.S. District Court in Oakland on Thursday morning on the single criminal charge. He was released on $1 million bail, U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman Abraham Simmons said.
The details of the case remain under seal for now. But earlier this year, one of Seeno’s companies, Discovery Sales Inc., was fined $8 million for a bank fraud scheme designed to shield Seeno’s real estate companies from the effects of the housing market collapse, according to court documents.
Discovery Sales was also ordered to pay $3 million in restitution to government-sponsored mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, though a plea agreement acknowledged that the financial impact of Discovery Sales’ conduct went far beyond those two lenders.
While Seeno himself was not criminally charged, Ayman Shahid, a Danville resident and vice president of Discovery Sales from 2006-2008, pleaded guilty to charges related to the scheme and several other employees and associates were prosecuted, with some sentenced to prison.
Discovery Sales was created by Seeno to sell homes built by his construction companies in developments throughout the East Bay.
The company sought to keep its home prices inflated to support a large line of credit and offered incentive programs to new home-buyers who couldn’t afford the high prices.
The incentive programs would provide assistance with down payments, among other things, but didn’t show up on bank loan documents. The company also offered cash assistance with mortgage payments to keep buyers from defaulting.
Since the case remains under seal, whether Seeno’s alleged witness retaliation is related to the criminal case against his company has not been revealed.
Seeno has been involved in previous civil litigation, including a case filed in Nevada in 2012 alleging that Seeno threatened violence over a soured business relationship.
Seeno is scheduled to return to court at 9:30 a.m. on July 22.
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