Long Beach Investor Guilty of Elder Abuse in House Scam

Real estate investor Ken Allen Lamphear must pay $4 million after duping a Long Beach woman who unwittingly signed over her house of nearly 50 years.

A Long Beach court jury ordered Lamphear to pay 80-year-old Suzanne “Susie” Yorgason $939,669 in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported.

With state civil rights penalties and attorney’s fees, the judgment against Lamphear could approach $6 million, according to Citybiz.

The settlement came after the jury found Lamphear guilty of elder abuse, fraud and fraud in the inducement, while acting with malice, oppression or fraud at the conclusion of a 10-day civil trial.

“A sophisticated real estate investor, Ken Lamphear, knew exactly what he was doing when he persuaded Ms. Yorgason to transfer her home to him without any documentation — no promissory note, no deed, no escrow and no payment of any kind,” Yorgason’s attorney, William Chapman, said in a statement.

Plaintiff Yorgason had lived in her Long Beach home in Alamitos Beach for 48 years before Lamphear fraudulently took her home without payment. She’d suffered a stroke, and was in a nursing home.

In addition to swindling her out of her home, she accused Lamphear of performing shoddy work on the house without getting her approval or the required permits, while moving her personal possessions into a storage unit.

Owing only $43,000 on a home valued at $800,000, the bedridden Yorgason had fallen behind on her mortgage and faced foreclosure.

A handyman renting Yorgason’s garage put her in touch with his boss Lamphear, who owned 31 residential income properties across Southern California, with a net worth of more than $33 million, according to Chapman.

Lamphear, 70, of Long Beach, said he couldn’t loan her any money. Instead, he offered to buy her house.

Yorgason agreed, but on one condition: that Lamphear would allow Yorgason’s developmentally disabled sister to continue living at the house for the rest of her life. Lamphear, according to Chapman, agreed — but the deal was never put into writing.

Yorgason was then visited by a notary public on Lamphear’s behalf. Without her glasses and not really knowing what she was signing, she signed a grant deed to her property, relinquishing her home, Chapman said. She’d believed Lamphear was acting in good faith.

Lamphear, who never gave her a promissory note or trust deed, then evicted Yorgason’s sister — who frantically tracked down a cousin in Huntington Beach. The cousin then contacted Chapman, who filed the civil lawsuit.

Lamphear’s attorney, Devin Murtaugh, said an appeal is likely. He said in an email that the jury decision profoundly misunderstands the facts and is a “tragedy for all involved.”

Murtaugh said he will ask the court to either reduce the damages or hold a new trial before any appeal. “It is, for better or worse, a long and complex process,” he told the Press-Telegram.

— Dana Bartholomew