Lifestyles Of The Rich, Famous And Convicted
The District of Columbia Court of Appeals ordered the interim suspension of an attorney based on a criminal conviction.
In re Sara J. King. Bar No. 1033988. March 29, 2024. King was suspended on an interim basis based upon her conviction of a serious crime in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
The Daily Pilot reported
A Newport Beach attorney who boasted of providing loans to wealthy and famous clients pleaded guilty Monday to a fraud scheme that bankrolled a gambling habit and a lavish lifestyle.
Sara Jacqueline King, 39, agreed in June to plead guilty to wire fraud and money laundering in an agreement, federal prosecutors said. King was scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 8.
King was also sued in federal court earlier this year in a claim alleging she defrauded a lender out of about $10.2 million.
Federal prosecutors allege that beginning at the start of 2022 and through Jan. 11 of this year, she collected about $8 million from five investors through her business King Family Lending LLC that was used to “gamble at Las Vegas casinos and support her lavish lifestyle.”
According to her plea agreement, King Lending purported to provide “short-term, high-interest loans to celebrities, professional athletes and other high-net-worth individuals secured by the borrower’s own assets, including designer handbags, watches, luxury automobiles, yachts and earnings from guaranteed professional sports contracts.”
King recruited investors to fund the business loans, claiming that the investments were secured by the same collateral as the loans, prosecutors said. She promised to hold the collateral and if a borrower defaulted she would sell it to pay the investor in full, prosecutors said.
King said she would keep a percentage of the interest earned from the loans and pass along a percentage to the investor along with the initial investment, prosecutors said.
But she never funded any loan and instead spent the money on herself, prosecutors said.
In the lawsuit, she was accused by British Virgin Island-based LDR International Limited of giving King 97 loans amounting to $10.2 million from January through October of last year. In one case, the collateral was a vintage Avengers comic book worth $25,000, the plaintiff said in the suit.
The lawsuit alleged that King “spent the majority of the funds loaned by plaintiff to King Lending to gamble in Las Vegas, fund an extravagant lifestyle, and for other personal uses by King. Plaintiff is informed and believes that King moved into the Wynn Las Vegas resort and hotel, lived there for six months, and gambled 24/7.”
Additional reportage from the Silicon Valley News.
And a posting from the United States Attorney for the Central District of California on the contemplated guilty plea
King admitted to causing five investors to lose more than $8 million. She has agreed that the applicable restitution amount in this case is at least $8,785,045.
She further admitted to withdrawing approximately $132,156 of investor money from King Family Lending’s bank account to purchase a Porsche Taycan electric sports car.
Finally, more colorful details are recounted by Los Angeles Magazine
This June morning, King sat at the defendant’s table next to her public defender in a black high-fashion suit and red-bottomed Christian Louboutin power pumps, hair piled in a sleek bun as behind her three of her victims—all former close friends—watched the proceedings from the galley.
One of them, L.A. trauma surgeon Amal Obaid-Schmid, who sat with her husband Steffen, told Los Angeles she and her husband invested more than $400,000—her family’s life savings—in King Family Lending. The couple met Sara King and her soon-to-be ex-husband, Iranian Prince Kamran Pahlavi, on the floor of the Wynn Casino and a fast friendship was born. Soon, King had a proposition for them, a rare opportunity to make a fast 10 percent return on an investment by funding a loan for one of her risky clients who needed fast cash she claimed was secured by that nonexistent collateral.
“We can’t make any statements until her sentencing,” the surgeon said after King was released on $5,000 bond secured by her father, Michael. Obaid-Schmid was flanked by her husband and another one of King’s victims, her former assistant and close friend Yumiko Sturdivant, who told Los Angeles the woman she looked up to as a big sister “has no soul” after she stole $10,000 from her.
“I see she still has her shoes,” Sturdivant remarked. “There has to be money somewhere.”
(Mike Frisch)