A California man who operated a Bloomfield Hills-based commercial real estate investment firm was sentenced Thursday for his role in “an extensive multi-year conspiracy to falsify financial statements,” as reported by the Department of Justice.
Tyler Ross, 38, was ordered to pay a $200,000 fine and spend one year and one day in prison, followed by two years of supervised probation, for one charge of conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States. Ross pleaded guilty to the charge last year in federal court in Detroit.
According to the DOJ, Ross — a San Francisco resident who formerly lived in Michigan — was co-chief executive officer of ROCO Real Estate LLC and ROCO Management LLC, both in Bloomfield Hills. The ROCO companies ran as a commercial real estate investment firm which purchased, managed and sold multi-family residential properties, such as apartment complexes, in Michigan and elsewhere.
As stated in a DOJ news release: “Between 2015 and 2019, Ross and his co-conspirators caused false financial documents, including historical operating statements that deleted or reduced actual expenses, to be submitted to mortgage lending businesses for underperforming ROCO properties, making the properties appear to be more profitable than they were in order to obtain refinancing or to avoid the exercise of certain contractual provisions by the lenders to protect themselves.”
Ross was a licensed attorney and acknowledged that he personally falsified the statements during the conspiracy and directed co-conspirators to assist in creating and submitting falsified financial statements to mortgage lending businesses, the DOJ stated.
Ross also falsified financial documents in connection with the 2019 sale of 43 ROCO properties to a privately held real estate investment company. He provided the bogus information to the properties’ buyer and to the financial institution that issued a $481 million loan for the transaction. Ross received more than $2 million in proceeds from the 2019 sale, the DOJ stated.
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