Date: Aug. 27, 2024

Contact: [email protected]

Portland, OR - An indictment was unsealed in federal court Aug. 27 charging the owners of a local real estate investment company with defrauding individual investors and commercial lenders out of more than $18 million.

Robert D. Christensen, of Sherwood, and Anthony M. Matic, of Damascus, have been charged in a 21-count indictment with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering.

According to the indictment, from approximately January 2019 through June 2023, Christensen and Matic are alleged to have devised and carried out a scheme wherein they convinced individual investors to fund the purchase and renovation of undervalued residential real estate properties. After renovating the properties, Christensen and Matic claimed they would rent the properties to generate income and then refinance them to extract their increased value from the renovations. The pair further misled investors into believing they would be repaid their full principal investment along with interest as high as 8-15% and a large lump sum payout, all within periods as short as 30 to 90 days.

Christensen and Matic's scheme failed to generate the promised returns almost immediately and they began using new investments to repay earlier investors to keep their business afloat. When they were unable to raise enough money from new investors, Christensen and Matic are alleged to have devised a separate scheme to defraud commercial lenders. By December 2020, the pair began submitting loan applications with false financial information to different commercial lenders and, based on their misrepresentations, received millions of dollars in loans.

In total, Christensen and Matic's two schemes defrauded individual investors out of more than $11 million and commercial lenders out of more than $7 million.

Christensen and Matic made their initial appearances in federal court today before a U.S. Magistrate Judge. Both were arraigned, pleaded not guilty, and released on conditions pending a 7-day jury trial scheduled to begin on Oct. 29.

Conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud are punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison and three years' supervised release. Money laundering in punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison and three years' supervised release. All three charges may also result in fines of up to $250,000 or twice the gross gains or losses resulting from the offense.

This case was investigated by the FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation. It is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Trisotto.

An indictment is only an accusation of a crime, and defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.

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