Remember Karen Elaine Hanover, the Seal Beach real estate saleslady who was looking at 40 years in prison but was sentenced to six months in jail for using “spoofing” technology to impersonate an FBI agent who threatened customers who'd complained about her shady deals?
A federal grand jury in Santa Ana Thursday indicted the 46-year-old on mail fraud charges tied to an alleged commercial real estate investment scheme that conned 50 marks out of nearly $2 million.
]
Hanover allegedly ran the scam out of Commercial Investment Education and Kharmic Life Strategies, both of Long Beach, pitching would-be investors at seminars in Southern California, Dallas and Las Vegas.
She is accused of falsely promising investors who paid her around $20,000 to $30,000 that they would become “equity partners” in commercial real estate, according to the indictment, which adds Hanover allegedly promised 100 percent returns and money-back guarantees.
After victims gave her money, the U.S. Attorney's office claims, Hanover gave them agreements that did not indicate the investors were equity partners, nor that they would receive 100 percent returns, nor that there was any money-back guarantee.
After some of these clients complained about Hanover on a blog, she used “spoofing” software–an online service that allows a
caller to
disguise a number and create a fake caller ID–to make her critics believe she was an FBI agent threatening them to keep their mouths shut
about her or they could get prison stretches.
Karen Elaine Hanover, Once Looking at 40 Years in Spoofing Case, Gets 6 Months in Jail
Scheduled to be arraigned Jan. 2 in Santa Ana, Hanover faces a maximum sentence of 60 years in prison with a conviction.
Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.