What Really Happened?
Rocky Mountain National Park, CO
I am doing this web page in self-defense.
In the years since 2003 I have never told my thousands of clients or the public in General about my experience or the miscarriage of justice that occurred in our community of Des Moines, Iowa.  I was caught up in a lie created by someone whom I gave my time, energy and money to.  God had blessed me with  success and  Because I felt so very fortunate I wanted to help someone in need..  it turned out,  She wanted more than I could give and when I did not give anymore, she set out to destroy my life and my career.  She succeeded in destroying my Real Estate Career but my life after Real Estate has been more rewarding and enjoyable than I ever imagined it could be.    The fact that something terrible did happen has left many unanswered questions and total misconception for people in Des Moines and my many devoted friends and Peers throughout North America whom I studied Real Estate with through my  confidant and mentor, Craig Proctor.  The group I studied with, Craig, Duff, Lenny, Marianne, Joey, Brian, Danny, Joyce and so many more became the Best Real Estate Agents in North America.  We worked together and created a system that was so successful it surprised even us.  It never crossed my mind that being the best would make me a target.  But it did……I am still amazed at how big my situation became in the local and national press.  I was simply a Real Estate Agent in Des Moines, Iowa doing what every Residential Real Estate Agent strives to do, List and Sell Houses.  I now know who the individuals are that conspired to feed the press, the FBI and the prosecutors the lies that ultimately cost me my career and all of my employees their jobs..  One in particular  had an ax to grind and a lot to gain if she could somehow get me out of the picture.  Following is what really happened .   I want you to know the truth because my children, my parents, my two brothers, my aunts and uncle, cousins and employees were the people truly affected.  Not to mention that as I rebuild my financial life with a new company I started in 2009 I find myself being judged at least once per week  by someone who simply does not know the truth.
Following is what really happened.  If after reading my side of this story, you still think I have done something wrong, that’S OK.  We can just agree to disagree.
In the fall of 1999 my Real Estate Business had grown to such an extent that I decided to buy the RE/MAX Franchise from the broker my team and I were working for.   In November of 2003 I received a letter from the head of RE/MAX Central telling me that I had earned over $3,000,000.00 in commissions during the past year and a half.  He went on to say that I was only the third person in the region to surpass the three million mark and that I had accomplished this milestone faster than the others.  Ironically, this was the same month that I had just sold a home for a woman that I had dated for a short period of time. 
While we were dating, she wanted to invest in a fixer upper house and asked me to find her one.  I had the perfect property for her and was familiar with it because I had tried to purchase the home myself a few weeks earlier.  At that time I was informed by the seller that I could not purchase it because I was the listing broker and since it was a foreclosure property, brokers working to sell  homes for this company were not allowed to buy any of the homes we had listed.  
 I had already done the research when I considered a purchase and had concluded that the home could be a good investment so I decided to show my friend the house and share my conclusion on what I thought the home may sell for after all the required repairs and improvements were completed.  It is important to note that just because we are Real Estate Agents does not’t mean we have some kind of crystal ball telling us if a home is going to go up in value or how long it is going to take to find a buyer.   Anyone who invests in fixer uppers will tell you that many times it turns into a money losing situation for various reasons.
After seeing the home my friend decided to make an offer to the seller who was the bank in California that had foreclosed on the property.  All the negotiations were conducted over the Internet.  After several offers and counter offers by the seller everyone settled on a price.   After several attempts, the woman I sold this home to  was unable to obtain financing.  And what all good realtors do when this situation arises is try to find a lender who is willing to work with our buyer.  In this case I approached the bank that handled all the finances for my Real Estate Company.  The Bank told me that I was a very good customer and since I was going to be the listing agent for the home after the repairs were done they agreed to finance the home for her.  The day she closed on the transaction my bank placed the money she needed to close into my Real Estate Company’s trust account.  My in house accountant/book keeper met her and the escrow company at the closing and gave them a check for the amount that the buyer needed in order to conclude her transaction.  The escrow company then wired the seller in California the proceeds for the sale of this property. 
My friend now owned a fixer upper home.  She knew very little about repairing a home or finding contractors to actually do the work.  I assisted her by recommending people I had used in the past.  I loaned her an additional $20,000.00 to pay the contractors.  I did this because I knew she was going to relist the home through my agency and I would be reimbursed when she resold the home.  Plus I was going to earn a commission for when she purchased the home and a second commission when she sold the home.  It was going to be a good deal for my Real Estate Company.
The work was completed in about 60 days.  I relisted the home and found a prospect for the home a short time later.  I made arrangements to show my buyer the home on a Saturday Morning.  I followed up with my friend the seller to tell her that I was going to show her home on Saturday.  She asked if she could go along when I met my buyer to show him her property.  On the way She told my buyer  that she had purchased the home for investment and had just finished the repairs.  After seeing the home my buyer told me that he wanted to buy the house.  We wrote up a purchase agreement with a price that was acceptable to my seller.  She then asked my buyer if she could be his loan officer as that is what she did for a living.  He agreed to buy the home and to allow her to finance him through her company so she could earn a commission as well.   I asked her if that could possibly be considered a conflict of interest.  She explained that it was OK if she disclosed that information to the investor who funded the loan.  It turned out she didn’t disclose that info to the investor.
In the state of Iowa the Real Estate Company has a larger role in closing a Real Estate transaction than in other states.  After a lender funds a transaction the money usually goes into the Trust Fund of the Real Estate Company whom had the home listed.  The Real Estate Company pays all the sellers selling expense and pays the seller the remaining money which is considered the proceeds on the transaction.  A local seller normally receives a check.  Out of state sellers normally have the proceeds wired to their bank accounts so they don’t have to wait for the mails to deliver their money.
My buyer was approved for his loan through my friend the sellers own mortgage company.  The closing was set for November of 2003.  When the closing date arrived the weather was turning bad and the roads were slippery.  As I was leaving my office to attend the closing my seller who was now also the loan officer called me to tell me that the roads were bad and that she and my buyer were already at the lawyer’s office.  She told me that she would deliver proceeds to my office in an hour or so and that I shouldn’t drive down to the closing because of the roads.  I thanked her for her consideration and went about my daily activities of running a Real Estate Company.
The snow started coming down harder and my seller-loan officer friend didn’t show up at my office with the proceeds check.  I assumed it was due to the road conditions.  The next day came and went but still no seller-loan officer.     The problem now was that the seller-loan officer owed my company approximately $68,000.00 so we could pay back the bank that funded her loan and to reimburse my company for the $20,000.00 we had paid her contractors to do the repairs on her house.  My staff and I tried in vain to contact her but she had disappeared with $93,000.00 of which $68,000.00 was due my company.
This was the beginning of the end of my Real Estate Career…..She obviously knew that we would attempt to collect the money she owed my company and the bank but in order to prevent us from collecting she placed the money into an attorney friend of hers' trust account and told her attorney friend that she knew nothing about her real estate transaction.  She created a lie in order to keep  money that belonged to my Real Estate Company.

 She claimed that I had purchased the home for myself using her name.  She claimed that I either stole her social security number out of her purse or broke into her car to obtain it from papers  she had in her car.  Her attorney  contacted the Federal Prosecutors office and spoke to a female Prosecutor who in turn contacted the FBI.
At this time I was not aware of the fact that she had made up this story about me or that she had contacted the FBI with her lie.  I simply thought that I had been ripped off by this devious woman.  I explained the situation to my bank who had funded her transaction.  I asked them to set my company up on monthly payments until I could resolve the situation and recover the money.  I met with an attorney to get advice on how to recover the money and after careful consideration concluded that it would be cheaper to write it off as a loss than to spend thousands of dollars in attorney fees to attempt to recover.  So,  that is exactly what I did.  I wrote it off as a loss and considered it a very expensive lesson.
My business continued to grow beyond any expectation I had ever had.  I felt that I had finally made it in a very competitive market that was dominated for years by the older Real Estate Companies.  Business was proceeding in our normal fast pace style.  There were days when I felt we were on a tread mill that just kept going faster and faster.  It was actually becoming hard to keep on top of the burgeoning business I had created and I actually felt sorry for my staff because there was never a break in the action..   It was a challenge but a very fun,  fulfilling challenge.  I was having more fun with my business then I ever thought possible.
Because of all the hard work my staff was doing I wanted to reward them with a night out for dinner and cocktails.  I was also giving them all rings or necklaces with diamonds as a token of my appreciation for all their hard work.  This night out was supposed to be a celebration but I sensed something wasn’t right.  Nobody was smiling or laughing during cocktails and I kept ordering more wine to relax everyone.  I thought they must be exhausted as we were now selling a home every 18 hours and it was a lot of work for all of us.  At one point I noticed my cousin giving me eye contact wanting me to follow him.  He was one of my agents and a trusted assistant.  He took me to the men’s room and said, “You have no idea of what is happening, do you?”  I answered no.  He proceeded to tell me that the FBI had been meeting with all of them and telling them that I was in trouble and that they may be in trouble as well for working for me.  The FBI had instructed my staff to not tell me anything about their meetings. 
As one might imagine I was concerned but not worried because I was not doing anything illegal.  I was so naive as to the ways of our government, I thought they were checking me out because my business was growing so quickly.  I thought they would see that nothing was amiss and go on their way to real criminals.  I was wrong.  I kept getting reports that they were visiting with people I had sold homes to in the past and asking them how much money I gave them to purchase their home.  None of this made any sense to me as we sell homes to make money not give it away.  A friend advised me to speak with an attorney who could intervene with the FBI on my behalf to find out exactly what it was they wanted to know.  I was more than willing to meet with them myself to answer any questions.  I wasn’t doing anything wrong and I was certain I could clear any misunderstanding up.  They never once met with me.  Again, not knowing how these guys operate I did everything wrong.   I actually thought they would get tired of looking for something that wasn’t there and go about their business.   However, they just wouldn’t go away so I finally took my friends advice and met with an attorney who collected a large retainer from me and gave me his word he would put a stop to the FBI nosing around.  Once again, I was so naive.  It turns out that the attorney I retained to help me was actually married to the Federal Prosecutor who was determined to indite me.   As a result he did nothing to intervene on my behalf.  I was told later that he did nothing because he knew all along that I was going to be indicted and that he wanted to handle a case that was most certainly going to be high profile.
Keep in mind that  the FBI was investigating me because an old girlfriend had told them I had stolen her identity in order to purchase a home in her name for my own benefit.    I am not sure how long into the FBI's investigation it took the FBI to figure out that this woman was lying to them.  In fact she had actually testified in front of a Grand Jury telling this incredible lie that she had created in order to keep the money I had arranged for her.  I was allowed to read her Secret Grand Jury Testimony as time went on.  It was 25 pages of fiction that made me out to be the second coming of Al Capone.  It was so insane that it was comical.  I thought to myself that who in their right mind would believe this story.  But again, not knowing how our government operates, someone believed it.
As I was saying, the FBI figured out eventually that she was lying in order to keep the money she owed.  But instead of saying  “Sorry Mr. Fazio” and going about their business they found a problem with the way my company was billing a customer and used that as a reason to drag me into Federal Court.
We as a company were managing hundreds of properties that were being foreclosed on by banks all over the United States.  We were spending hundreds of thousands of my company’s dollars to pay for utilities, upkeep, trashing out all the homes in our inventory and in many cases covering the cost of total renovation to these homes.  It was taking all of my companies cash reserves because these banks had so many homes they were foreclosing on that they couldn’t keep up.  It would take months and sometimes never for us to get reimbursed by the various banks.  I was borrowing from my bank to cover the cost of maintaining hundreds of properties at a time.  We decided as a company to up charge 10% on any work we  were serving as the contractor on.  That way we could cover the cost of my company having to borrow all this money to maintain our client’s assets.  Evidently the way my bookkeeping department went about adding this extra 10% made it look like we were over billing our clients when in fact we were only charging ten percent.  This didn’t even cover the expense of my people driving to each house weekly to do an inspection, or the cost of advertising and all the time it took for us to provide pricing information, etc, etc.    It was a bargain to our clients but the FBI made it look like we were robbing Fort Knox.
My bookkeeper handled all of the company’s money.  She paid all the bills, deposited all of the cash that came into the company. She did all of our billings and collections.  She gave the CPA info on the hours all the employees worked so he could make payroll.  She even handled all of my personal money and helped me keep up with my personal obligations as I had become too busy with the company and needed her assistance to help me manage my affairs.  Because of her position with sending invoices and collecting money from the various banks that hired us to manage their properties, the FBI told her she would be going to prison because she was not billing properly.  The system she created to help us collect the ten percent up charge was not legal according to the feds..  They told her they would cut her a deal and grant her immunity to prosecution if she would say that I taught her this system of billing.  If she agreed to do that,  everything would fall on my shoulders and she wouldn’t have to deal with her mistake.   They scared her to the point that she went along with anything they asked her to say.   So without me even knowing what was going on I was being set up and held responsible for something I wasn’t even aware was happening.  I truly don’t think she intended to harm me but that is something I will probably never know for sure.
So now that you have the background on how this ball got rolling in the first place I want to share with anyone who is reading this what proceeded to take place and eventually ruined my company, my reputation and the very severe punishment that I have endured due to something that never even happened to begin with.
Let’s move up to December of 2004.  Everything had quieted down.  I had not received any reports of the FBI meeting with customers for several months which led me to believe that the attorney I had retained had done his job.  Life was going on as normal.  Business was awesome, I had fallen in Love and I had virtually put all the crazy stuff of the past year out of my mind.  I only wanted to concentrate on the positive.   On a Thursday night in December of 2004 I proposed to a beautiful woman whom I had met the year before.  She accepted and we were both very excited about our future together.  The very next night I was on my way to pick her up so we could go Christmas Shopping.  On my way there I was listening to the Radio in my car.  The lead in to the news was this, “High profile Des Moines Realtor indicted on nine counts of mail and wire fraud.”     The radio station then went into a commercial.  I remember wondering to myself who it could be.  Des Moines is a small town and all of the Realtors know one another.  The radio station came out of commercial and proceed to say, “51 year old Realtor, Leonard Fazio, has been indicted in Federal Court and has been charged with nine counts of wire fraud and mail fraud.  His is facing up to 20 years in prison.”……..It was very surreal and I remember thinking, Gee I’m 51.  The severity of it went over my head.  Then my cell phone started  ringing.  People were telling me I was all over the news on TV and on radio.  I drove to where my new finance was waiting for me.  She was in tears and I was confused.  We called the attorney that I had retained to ask him what was going on and what he knew.  He was so intoxicated that I could barely understand him.  He ended the call with we will talk in the morning.
The next morning I was attempting to do damage control with my hundreds of  customers.  My phone beeps in my ear and I answered the call.  It was a very well know gentleman who will remain nameless but a person who everyone in the State of Iowa would know.  His exact words were, “Leonard, you have been Fucked!”  He had taken the liberty to arrange a Sunday Morning Meeting  with Attorney, Alfredo Parrish.  He had personally set up the appointment for me but told me it was my choice whether to show up or not.  Needless to say, I showed up.
I told Alfredo about the woman who had stolen my companies money and told him I assumed that incident was what this was about.  I am not even sure he believed me at this point.  After all it was a pretty lame story that she didn’t know about the home she had purchased, fixed up and resold.  We left it that he would get all the facts on Monday morning and we would proceed from there.
Early the next morning at my new attorny's office is when I learned what was going on and how much trouble I was in.  This is where the story starts getting interesting as the things I am about to reveal for the very first time will hopefully convince all of my distracters that I didn’t have a chance.  I simply didn’t know that the truth doesn’t matter in our Federal Court System.  I couldn’t wait to have my day in court so everyone would see the truth and I could go on with my life.  I truly thought the judge would slam the gavel down and throw the case out because there was no validity to any of their acquisitions.  Nothing could have prepared me for what I am about to share with you.

                                               To Be Continued................

I started to tell this story several months ago.  It is now June 21, 2011. 
On June 6th I was released from Federal Authorities when my probation finally ended.  Now I have to figure out how to pull all the aspects of this case and my story together.  I want the world to know the individuals who were responsible for this incredible web of lies but most of all I want to expose the corrupt Federal Authorities who knew from their investigation that the entire case against me was fiction but did nothing to correct their mistake and did everything to cover up the truth.
My problem is doing it without boring anyone who wishes to read this because of all the necessary details.
Keep checking back.  As time permits I will begin to tell you about my experience which involves betrayal, lies, treachery, conspiracy and my fight for justice.
Please keep in mind that I am not a writer.  I ask you to overlook poor grammor or fragmented sentences.  I just want to tell the truth and will write it as I lived it.

                           JULY 3, 2011

On Valentines day in 2000 I suddenly became a single parent when my wife Carrie left me with no warning so she could reconnect with an old boy friend from her college days.  So here I was trying to build a Real Estate Company with a new RE/MAX Franchise I had just purchased and at the same time learning how to be a single parent because my children lived with me.  It was a challenging time for me but everything turned out well.  I have great kids and we adjusted very nicely to a life without mom.  Unfortunately for Carrie, she was not happy with me winning custody.  She started a crusade to somehow get even with me but everything she attempted always seem to backfire on her.  That did not stop her from trying though.

In the early hours of a Wednesday morning in January of 2003 a member of my Real Estate Team came into my office and announced that she had met the woman of my dreams the night before.  My assistant knew that I was attracted to petite brunets and thought she had found one that I would like.  The woman's name was Candy.  She was a loan officer for a small mortgage company called Apex Mortgage Company.  She wanted to meet me for a number of reasons.  The biggest reason was because of the number of homes I sold every month.  She felt that if she could develop a relationship with me she could benefit financially by providing mortgages for as many clients as I could steer her way.  I sensed this even before I met her and as a result I didn't call her as my assistant wanted me to do.

Several months passed by and every week I would receive at least two calls from Candy wanting to meet me for a cocktail or coffee.  I always had some excuse as to why I couldn't meet her on those days.

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