A Langley-based developer accused of fraud in the United States will appeal his extradition south of the border in February.
Mark Chandler is facing a fraud charge in California, following an FBI investigation into a property development project known as Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles, between 2008 and 2011.
Investors in the project lost cash, and even their homes. The FBI alleges it was a case of fraud, while Chandler’s lawyer at the first extradition proceedings said it was simply a losing investment.
“The record of the case portrays a fraud that does not exist,” said Michael Bolton, Chandler’s lawyer during the hearing.
The judge disagreed, and ordered Chandler extradited to face trial in the U.S.
Chandler remains free on bail under a number of conditions.
He will appear before judges of the B.C. Court of Appeal on Feb. 15, in a Vancouver courtroom.
If he is ordered extradited, he could apply to appeal his case to the Supreme Court of Canada, said John Gibb-Carsley, a lawyer for Canada’s Department of Justice who has argued the case for the extradition to move forward.
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Chandler is best known in Langley for his involvement in the Murrayville House condo project, which dissolved into lawsuits in 2017.
Would-be buyers waited months and in some cases years as repeated construction delays pushed back the opening date of the project.
The numbered company that owned the project was placed into receivership in 2017. It turned out that some units had been promised to two, three, or even four purchasers, through both ordinary pre-sale contracts and “wholesale” contracts in which more money was put down up front.
A judge voided all the sales contracts this year, and over the summer the units were finally put up for sale. Legal wrangling between the project’s many creditors is ongoing.
The Langley RCMP announced this year that an investigation had been opened into the Murrayville House project.
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