OAKLAND (BCN) A Contra Costa County real estate investor has been convicted by a federal jury in Oakland of conspiring to rig bids on auctions of foreclosed property.
Glenn Guillory, who worked out of an office in Walnut Creek, was found guilty of the conspiracy charge on Monday by a jury in the court of U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton.
He will be sentenced by Hamilton on Aug. 2. The conviction carries a maximum possible sentence of 10 years in prison.
Guillory is the 65th person to be convicted through a trial or guilty plea in federal court in Northern California in a U.S. Justice Department probe of bid rigging at public foreclosure auctions at county courthouses in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and San Francisco counties.
A 2014 grand jury indictment alleged that between June 2008 and January 2011, Guillory and other investors at Contra Costa County auctions agreed not to bid against one another and to select the winning bidders for
hundreds of properties sold in the auctions.
It alleged that the conspirators negotiated payoffs to one another for not competing and often held a second, private auction, known as a round, among themselves for the properties obtained through the bid rigging.
Proceeds from foreclosure auctions are used to pay off the mortgage and other debts attached to the property, and any remaining funds are paid to the defaulting homeowner. The bid rigging diminished the proceeds
for those purposes, the grand jury said.