Oakland native sentenced for $110M real estate investor fraud

An Oakland businessman who played fast and loose with $110 million from foreign real estate investors was sentenced to 16 months behind bars.

Thomas Henderson, former owner of the historic Tribune Tower, was sentenced to federal prison for his role in the fraud scheme, the San Francisco Business Times reported. Restitution will be determined at a later date.

Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg accepted a guilty plea deal for the 72-year-old Oakland native who’d faced up to 10 years in prison for the EB-5 visa fraud.

Henderson pleaded guilty in 2021 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and another of making a false statement to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. A Henderson associate, Cooper Lee, also pleaded guilty for his role in diverting certain investor funds.

The shorter sentence and three years of probation took into account Henderson’s age, health and lack of criminal history.

The real estate investor admitted he had formed a limited liability company in 2010 to raise money from foreign investors through the EB-5 visa program, a job-creation and immigration service run by CIS.

The program grants permanent U.S. residency to foreign commercial investors who commit $1 million or more — or $500,000 in areas with high unemployment — to U.S. ventures that result in at least 10 full-time domestic jobs.

Henderson used his San Francisco Regional Center LLC to raise more than $100 million from more than 200 foreign investors.

In his plea agreement, Henderson admitted he’d spent investor funds on unrelated business ventures as well as prior projects that had run out of money, as well as on buying new properties.

The scheme came to light when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2017 sued Henderson for fraud after business partners took him to court for obscuring financial information, backing out of commitments and failing to repay a $3.7 million loan used to buy Jack London Gateway shopping center in West Oakland. He was arrested in 2019.

Until then, the founder of Avalon Bay Foods and owner of Tribune Tower and the historic I. Magnin building and Dufwin Theater had been celebrated by Oakland officials for job creation.

Lee pleaded guilty in 2021 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and was sentenced by Seeborg last April to three years of probation and $20,000 in restitution. He admitted to transferring investor funds and preparing documents to make it look like they were legitimate.

— Dana Bartholomew