A Boca Raton couple who scammed investors out of more than $50 million have pleaded guilty to charges related to real estate investment fraud.
Jean Joseph, who has one previous criminal conviction from a separate 2019 case, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering. His plea came a month after co-defendant Janalie Camille Bingham, who also goes by Janalie Camille Joseph, pleaded guilty to wire fraud.
Joseph and Bingham induced investors to pony up funds through their Wells Real Estate Investment firm from 2019 to 2024.
They promised the money was secured by Wells’ valuable real estate, at one point misrepresenting its value at about $450 million. They told victims their investments would go toward increasing the “value to existing residential and commercial assets and zoned parcels of land to be used as long-term revenue-generating properties,” according to statements of evidence signed by Joseph and Bingham.
In reality, a small portion of the money went toward real estate, while about $28 million was used for speculative equities trading. Another $8 million was disbursed in Ponzi-like payments, using new investors’ funds to pay long-time investors, the statements say. Prosecutors alleged that about $12 million was lost in the equities trading, though Joseph didn’t admit to that.
The pair also misled people by telling them Wells paid no commissions for the sale of promissory notes, only to then pay 15 percent commissions for a total of about $8 million.
The couple spent another $3.5 million of investors’ money on themselves, including for a $1.9 million primary home. Property records show that an entity tied to Wells bought a two-story, five-bedroom home at 930 Parkside Circle in Boca Raton.
They are scheduled to be sentenced June 4. The public defender representing Joseph and Dunham declined to comment.
Joseph and Bingham concealed Joseph’s 2019 criminal case, with Bingham being the sole signatory to a Wells Real Estate Investment bank account, though Joseph directed her to make transactions, according to Joseph’s statement.
He hid his involvement by representing his name as “Jon” to investors and Wells employees and transferred Wells to Bingham’s name in 2019, though Joseph controlled the company, prosecutors alleged.
Joseph pleaded guilty in 2019 to wire fraud for misappropriating $3 million while operating the company Evergreen United Investments. He was ordered to pay that amount as restitution and serve 15 months in prison. He was placed on supervised release in 2021, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit.
In the Wells case, indictments were filed against Joseph and Bingham in October, about a year after the SEC filed a civil complaint against Wells. In that suit, a court-appointed receiver has been working to sell properties tied to Joseph, Bingham and Wells.
Last month, federal Judge Donald Middlebrooks approved the receiver’s request to sell the one-story, five-bedroom home at 910 Parkside Circle, near the 930 Parkside Circle home. The receiver sold the home for $1.8 million to the Michael Feingold Revocable Trust, according to records.
Middlebrooks also authorized the receiver in December to sell the 2,600-square-foot, three-bedroom condo at 3968 North Ocean Drive 7, which shortly after traded for $842,500, records show.
Among the other Wells-tied properties the receiver has been offloading are 10 Boca Raton office condo units, which Middlebrooks approved to be traded through a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure due to a foreclosure suit filed before the SEC’s case against Wells.
