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Chander Singh, 46, reshaped a failed company into an unscrupulous criminal venture by soliciting loans from investors to buy distressed properties, authorities said.
Singh promised double-digit returns from what would be renovations of the ratholes, which he found with the help of his parents and brother, all of whom worked as real estate agents, they said.
No properties were actually bought during the five years that Singh ran the scheme, Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella said. Any of the 30 or so victims who saw any kind of return were merely given previous investors’ money, he said.
Singh laundered the rest through a network of banks, avoiding cash transaction reports by depositing less than $10,000 at a time, the prosecutor said.
Musella’s Financial Crimes Unit began looking into complaints in February 2020.
They instantly learned that Singh had left the country a month earlier, found lodging with relatives in Trinidad and Guyana and even looked into possibly practicing law in the West Indies, according to documents on file in Superior Court in Hackensack.
An attorney by trade, Singh was disbarred that June. He resurfaced in New Jersey in October.
Tipped off that he intended to split again, Musella's detectives seized Singh at his parents’ home in Emerson on Nov. 10, 2020. They filed 16 criminal charges against him and sent him to the Bergen County Jail to await trial.
A Superior Court judge in Hackensack freed Singh two weeks later but with conditions. Given the concerns that he could abscond once more, the judge made him surrender his passports.
More than two years of back-and-forth finally ended with Singh cutting a deal with prosecutors.
He pleaded guilty to the money laundering part of the case this past March in exchange for an eight-year prison sentence handed down earlier this month.
Singh must serve three years before he’ll be eligible for parole under the terms of the agreement. Musella’s office, meanwhile, dropped various counts of conspiracy, forgery, and ID theft, among others.
Singh, whose parents and brother cut deals of their own, remained held in the Bergen County Jail on Tuesday, May 16, pending assignment to a New Jersey prison.
Chief Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Megan Kilzy handled the case for the state, assisted by Detectives William McMonigle and Anthony Cilento, Analyst Jonathan Misskerg and Victim Witness Advocate Michelle Churchill, Musella said.
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