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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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April 13th,
2007 - Wilkes’ Home to go on Auction Block |
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Wilkes’ Home to go on Auction
Block By William Finn Bennett North County Times April 13, 2007 10:34 PM PDT North County - The woes of
troubled defense contractor Brent Wilkes continued to mount this week with
the announcement that his home in a gated Poway community was going on the
auction block. The announcement follows his
February indictment for alleged acts of corruption connected to the bribery
scandal involving former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Wilkes recently defaulted on
a $600,000-plus loan on his 5,325-square-foot home and now, according to an
advertisement published this week in the Poway News Chieftain, lender Merrill
Lynch Business Financial Services is auctioning the property "as is"
to the highest bidder on May 2. The man who once headed a
multimillion-dollar defense company and flew around the country on a
corporate jet has had a lot of bad news of late. In February, a federal grand
jury in San Diego indicted Wilkes in two separate but related cases. In one, he was charged with
bribing Cunningham to win lucrative defense contracts in exchange for lavish
vacations, money and evenings with prostitutes. In that indictment, Wilkes
faces 25 criminal charges, including 17 counts of fraud, three counts of
laundering more than $12 million, one count of bribery, one count of bribing
a public official and three counts of unlawful monetary transactions. A separate indictment
charges Wilkes and the CIA's former No. 3 man, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo,
with fraud, conspiracy and illegal money transfers - charges that stem from
the same investigation that sent Cunningham to federal prison in early 2006
for eight years and four months. Foggo, a childhood friend of
Wilkes, allegedly used his position to funnel lucrative government contracts
to Wilkes and supplied inside information to help him land tens of millions
of dollars in defense contracts for his Poway-based ADCS Inc., according to
the indictment. Officials with the U.S.
attorney's office in San Diego did not return phone calls seeking comment
Friday, nor did Wilkes' attorney, Mark Geragos. In January, after Wilkes
defaulted on a $12 million loan on the 99,000-square-foot building that once
served as his corporate headquarters, the lender scheduled an auction of the
property. But before the auction could be held, the property was sold for an
undisclosed amount. The building was once the
thriving center for Wilkes' corporate empire. Over a five-year period
starting in 2000, ADCS received tens of millions of dollars in federal
contracts. But those contracts began evaporating when Cunningham became the
target of the federal investigation that eventually landed him in prison. It was not clear Friday
whether Wilkes' Poway home is one of the properties he is trying to use to
secure the $2 million bond he must post to stay out of jail pending the
outcome of the federal cases against him. A spokesman for the county
assessor's office said Friday that the four-bedroom, four-and-a-half bath
home in the 13700 block of Paseo Valle Alto in Poway was built in the
mid-1990s and has an assessed value of $1.6 million. The property is owned by
the Brent and Regina Wilkes Family Trust. At the time of his
indictment, federal Judge Larry Alan Burnes stipulated a bond amount of $2
million for Wilkes to remain free pending the outcome of the cases against
him. However, in a March 13 filing with the court, Geragos asked the judge to
allow Wilkes to use $615,000 in property equity to secure the $2 million
bond. But prosecutors insisted the amount of equity would need to be $1.5
million, court records show. On April 2, Burns granted a
defense request for more time to resolve the bond issue. The matter was
scheduled to be resolved in an April 9 hearing. Then on April 6, Geragos asked
for another extension and Thursday, Burns postponed the matter until April 23. External link: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/04/14/news/sandiego/5_02_484_13_07.txt |