Ellis Galyon, Bid-Rigging, Georgia 2007

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Table of Contents

Bid-Rigging Scandal Rocks Atlanta Real Estate

Two Georgia real estate investors have pleaded guilty to their roles in bid-rigging and fraud conspiracies committed at public real estate foreclosure auctions in the Atlanta metro area.

According to court documents filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta, Ellis Galyon and Christopher Anderson each admitted to agreeing with other real estate investors to rig auctions of foreclosed homes. The conspirators agreed not to compete for the purchase of selected foreclosed homes, allowing them to win the auctions with artificially low bids.

The winning bidders then paid off the other conspirators who had refrained from bidding against them. As a result, conspirators profited from money that otherwise would have gone to mortgage holders and other secured debt holders, and in some cases, to the people who owned the foreclosed homes.

Galyon admitted to participating in the conspiracy in Fulton County between June 2007 and at least July 2011. Anderson admitted to participating in the conspiracy in Fulton County between December 2007 and October 2011, and in DeKalb County between September 2009 and November 2011.

Including Galyon and Anderson, twenty-two defendants have been charged in connection with the ongoing investigation into bid rigging and fraudulent schemes involving real estate foreclosure auctions in the Atlanta area. Twenty of those have either pleaded guilty or agreed to plead guilty.

The charges have been filed as a result of the ongoing investigation being conducted by the Antitrust Division’s Washington Criminal II Section, the FBI’s Atlanta Division, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Georgia, in connection with the President’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force.

For more information about the task force, please visit www.StopFraud.gov. Anyone with information concerning bid rigging or fraud related to public real estate foreclosure auctions should contact the Washington Criminal II Section of the Antitrust Division at 202-598-4000, call the Antitrust Division’s Citizen Complaint Center at 888-647-3258, or visit http://www.justice.gov/atr/report-violations.