{ bollyw ood mir a ge }
T
he audience at Taneja’s film pre- miere in Falls Church included a young Harvard-trained doc- tor of Indian descent who had
been friends with the Tanejas for years. He, his wife and their two young chil- dren spent considerable time with the family, he said, socializing at temple events and celebrating holidays and birthdays together. When the doctor, now 37, was fresh
out of medical school and facing a pile of school loans and credit card debt, he turned to Taneja for help in buying his first house. Taneja got him a $780,000 mortgage on a roomy brick Colonial in Howard County for no money down. “He said he’d make sure I’d get the
best deal because I was part of the fam- ily,” recalled the doctor, who did not want to be identified for fear of the im- pact his involvement might have on his career. “He said, ‘Don’t worry.’ … It was a very carefree attitude [as if] he’s done mortgages for a long time, and nothing would happen.” But something did happen. In 2007,
the doctor did a routine check of his credit score and noticed something odd. Taneja had recently helped him refinance his home to get a better rate, but the credit agencies were reporting that the original loan had never been paid off. “I asked Vijay about it, and he told
me it was just some mix-up, and that I shouldn’t check my credit score too often, that it would hurt my credit,” the doctor said. If Taneja was worried about the
real estate market beginning to crash around him, he gave no public sign of it, boasting of plans to build a huge enter- tainment complex in the ’burbs called “Little India.” “I’m a very optimistic type of thinker,” he told Darshan TV. “What- ever goes down has to come up, and whatever goes up has to come down. I’m predicting a year or two from now we’re going to have a robust real estate market once again. I’ve been through this cycle many times.” Meanwhile, the doctor’s mailbox be-
gan filling with alarming notices from mortgage companies that he had never heard of, demanding money for pay- ments that were 30, 60 and 90 days late. He called Taneja, mystified. Again,
Taneja put him off. He would clear it all up, Taneja reassured him; he just needed some time. Shortly thereafter, special agents in
the FBI’s Washington field office began to hear complaints from several large banks about Taneja’s business activities, according to Adam Sidney Lee, who was in charge of the case. The housing bubble had burst, ex-
posing thousands of criminals who had cheated the system during the boom years. Some of the fraud was breathtak- ing, said Anthony Sanders, a professor of real estate finance at George Mason University who calls Taneja the “Indian Bernie Madoff,” referring to the infa- mous Ponzi scheme operator, because he preyed on his own community. With his debt mounting and the FBI
on his tail, Taneja filed for bankruptcy, hired an attorney and agreed to sit down with investigators. Lee said Taneja seemed weary as he
recited how the scams unfolded. “He was resigned to the fact this whole thing was coming to an end.” Taneja’s fraud may have begun as
early as 1999, investigators said. He found several ways to get cash, includ- ing tapping lines of credit from banks and selling bogus loans that did not ex- ist to secondary investors. He duped his own clients by sitting at the closing ta- ble and having them sign several sets of loan documents, including the original mortgage, as well as other mortgages the buyers weren’t aware of, authorities said. He had the coupon books for the additional mortgages sent to his An- nandale office and kept the payments current to avoid arousing suspicion. He even turned his own home into a cash cow — writing four bogus mortgages to come up with $14.8 million, much of which went to fund the movie. Investigators found dozens of local homeowners who had turned to Taneja
‘‘ 26 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | june 6, 2010
for help and were left with ruined credit and thousands of dollars of legal fees. The Howard County doctor said he
and his wife fear that they may lose their home if their finances are not untangled. “It destroyed us completely,” he said.
“First of all, psychologically my wife is still in dismay. They were her closest friends. It was the biggest shock of my life.” Taneja agreed to plead guilty in a
money laundering scheme to stealing $33 million, but the bankruptcy trustee says the true amount could top $150 mil- lion, making it the largest solo bank fraud in the history of the Eastern District of Virginia. It could take years and millions more in legal fees before the associated bankruptcy case — with more than $100 million in claims — is sorted out. “He was iconic for us because of
the amount he was able to steal as an individual,” Lee said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He said he’d make sure I’d get the best deal because I was part of the family.
He said, ‘Don’t worry.’ ” A friend of Taneja’s who became a fraud victim
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