UPDATED, Feb. 16, 2011: Ibn Muquaddin Shafi was acquitted of all charges by U.S. District Court Judge Gerald Bruce Lee in October 2009.
CORRECTION: Ibn Muquaddin Shafi is not the son of a South African real estate developer. A story that appeared in The Examiner on July 25, 2009 was incorrect on this point.
A Northern Virginia man has been accused of swindling four Virginia investors of $450,000 in two separate schemes, according to an indictment filed in Alexandria’s federal court.
Ibn Muquaddin Shafi, of Herndon, allegedly ran the scheme through his company Yasik Group LLC.
According to an indictment filed Thursday, in November 2004 Shafi convinced three people to invest $300,000 in a development project called the Belles at Malta near Saratoga, N.Y. Shafi told the investors that the cash would be used for clearing the land, permits and designs for the nanotechnology company for which he claimed to be building a home. The investors were promised a return of $1 million on their investment.
Instead, Shafi spent $23,733 on the project, which never got off the ground, charging documents said. The remainder of the cash was spent on a BMW for his girlfriend, rugs, artwork, spa treatments and his rent. He also used $65,000 to pay off a settlement in a civil suit.
Shafi also did not pay the man he hired to oversee the project, despite the project’s financial officer spending months acquiring vendors for the development, court documents said.
Shafi’s attorney, Whitney Minter, declined to comment.
In a separate scheme that Shafi is accused of starting in August 2005, he persuaded a Falls Church homeowner to sign over her title in exchange for Yasik Group assuming the remaining $150,000 on her mortgage, the indictment said. Shafi told the woman he planned to build a second home on the lot and that she could live in her home before and after construction.
When the settlement of the agreement was completed, Shafi received $51,000 from the settlement agent for a fabricated invoice claiming costs incurred for consulting services, court documents said. Shafi then never made the mortgage payments, nor further developed the land, and the house fell into foreclosure in June 2007.
