Feds snare Newport Beach financier who ‘bilked $100M to fund private jets, fleet of supercars and sex-fueled mega parties’

Federal agents swooped early Wednesday morning on the Orange County mansion of a slick Indian financier accused of bilking a local bank out of almost $100 million.

With automatic weapons dawn, G-men in tactical gear pounced on Mahender Makhijani, 44, at his plush home on Montecito Drive in the exclusive coastal enclave of Corona del Mar in Newport Beach.

Agents with guns and a shield breached the mansion’s gate and pounded on the front door. “Police with a warrant – Come to the door!” yelled an agent.

After a few tense moments, Makhijani came out in pajamas. Agents placed him in cuffs and put him black sedan to be transported to jail. It was a dramatic ending to a high-flying financial career marked by scandal and brutality.

Federal prosecutors say Makhijani defrauded a bank out of nearly $100 million by doctoring title policies to make real estate used as collateral look more valuable than it truly was. The money still has not been recovered, according to court papers.

Makhijani, who is a permanent US resident from India, is charged with bank fraud.

He is expected to make his initial appearance this afternoon in the United States District Court in Santa Ana.

“When criminals are allowed to deceive lenders, the spillover effects can harm consumers and businesses,” said First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli. “Today’s arrest highlights our office’s continued determination to combat threats to our nation’s banking system.”

Makhijani, who often wore designer sunglasses even while indoors and favored posh linen shirts, was accustomed to traveling by private jet and kept two mansions side by side, with the second reserved for his inrelatives, according to prosecutors.

The flashy financial mastermind rolled around in a fleet of luxury cars that included a Bentley, Porsche, and Mercedes G-Wagon, controlling “vast sums of money,” to support his lavish lifestyle, according to court documents.

But Makhijani obtained the money illegally, according to authorities who say he used a complex web of companies and financial instruments to hide the true value of his wealth, which still remains unknown.

“Makhijani has significant financial resources, but the government has not fully traced and accounted for those resources, which are almost certainly not held in Makhijani’s name,” states a criminal complaint.

The financier used Newport Beach-based company called Cantor V to execute his cons, according to prosecutors, but Cantor V was just one of “numerous entities” the fraudster controlled, court documents say.

To bilk the bank, which was not identified by authorities, out of almost $100 million, Makhijani personally falsified bank real estate titles using a laptop, prosecutors say, by manually changing metadata fields or by printing and scanning altered documents.

Makhijani bragged to associates that he would flee to India if he were ever caught and used a team of henchmen to carry out his deeds, according to feds, controlling them by threatening to “kill” them and put their “family on the street” and “their kids on welfare.”

Witnesses said Makhijani would also blackmail his underlings, hosting parties with sex workers and drugs which were attended by bank employees, later threatening to expose those who participated in the twisted festivities.  

He employed brute force against his financial rivals, posting eviction notices at the homes of their family members and directing men to break into their businesses. In one dispute, he posted a billboard accusing an enemy of robbery in a bid to ruin his reputation.

Video and photo evidence collected by prosecutors showed Makhijani in shades and designer clothes as he calmly directed his thugs to attack security guards, smash windows, and take financial documents from his business competitors.

In a 2023 dispute with a former partner over who had the right to run the Hotel Laguna, he brought his bouncers into the hotel lobby, where they roughed up workers there, evidence in the criminal complaint shows.

The disturbances caused the Hotel Laguana and another hotel called 14 West to be temporarily closed for business by the city manager, according to The Daily Pilot, which reported that armed guards were involved in a 20-person brawl at the properties.   

In May an arbitrator awarded approximately $1.34 billion to Laguna Beach businessman Mohammad Honarkar over the dispute, which included dozens of other properties, concluding that Makhijani breached agreements and defrauded Honarkar.

“Criminals like this, they have multiple companies, multiple places,” Honarkar told The Pilot. “They hide, and [Makhijani] doesn’t give you any paper.”