John Noguez in jail uniform
In mid June, major news media, especially the Los Angeles Times (June 14, 2013) began reporting about how Iranian-American developer Eskandar E. Bolour was getting engulfed in the scandals involving Los Angeles County Assessor Juan Renaldo “John” Noguez when he was hit with search warrants aimed at finding out whether Bolour had been laundering campaign donations for Noguez. My sources tell me that Bolour may just be the second Iranian-American to get caught up in the investigation, but he isn’t likely to be the last. It’s first important that charged with a bribery scheme in exchange for lower tax bills along with Assessor Noguez is Iranian-American “Tax Consultant” (an unregulated profession in California) Ramin Salari.
Ramin Salari
Well before his current woes in connection with his bribery prosecution, Ramin, according to an April 19, 2012 Los Angeles Weekly article, he was accused by his own cousin in a lawsuit of being a “thief,” a “crook,” a “liar” and a “charlatan.” The Weekly also exposed Ramin as having threatened deputy assessors with disciplinary action if they didn’t see eye to eye with his demands for lowered property tax assessments and had faced accusations of failing to turn over subpoenaed evidence.
So, who would I be looking at if I was in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office? If I was a suspicious individual, I’d be looking at another Bolour, Mehdi Bolour.
Mehdi Bolour
First and foremost, Mehdi held a fundraiser at his $30,000,000 Beverly Hills mansion for John Noguez’s election campaign. Secondly, it’s not like he has no history of coordinating his campaign contributions with Eskandar: at least as early as September 19, 1995, both of them just happened to make contributions to “Citizens for Waters” (as in Rep. Maxine Waters) and I don’t actually think that it was by coincidence. Incidentally (“coincidentally” maybe….) the contributions were for identical amounts as well.
Ezri Namvar
Campaign contributors to Noguez seemed to have this coincidental ability to wind up with extreme property tax reductions. Take the Namvar family (like Mehdi Bolour, Iranian-Jewish). An October 18, 2012 letter to then District Attorney Steve Cooley from a group calling itself “Namvar Creditors” said:
As your office is aware, one of the largest property value reductions was for Mr. Salari’s client, Houshang Sean Namvar. Sean Namvar and members of his family are also involved with over Billion Dollar scam that has destroyed the lives of hundreds of families and thousands of individuals, including widows and orphans, in our community. This is the same Sean Namvar who is living in an $8,000,000.00 mansion paid for with money stolen from his Victims. This is the same mansion he bribed John Noguez for. The Namvars and their co-conspirators have a history of bribery, corruption, fraud, and host of other crimes, please do not just take our word for it for the Trustees involved in the Namvar Bankruptcy cases have alleged the same. Sean Namvar’s eldest brother, Ezri Namvar, has already been convicted and is serving time for his involvement for just a portion of his crimes.
Reliable sources tell me that a potential investigation by the District Attorney’s office in connection with his activities on behalf of John Noguez is not the only thing Mehdi has to worry about these days. The man has a penchant for making enemies and in spite of the fact that he’s probably a billionaire, if not at least a millionaire hundreds of times over, he has a reputation of having gotten to that status by (a) being a cheapskate who nickels and dimes even his “friends” in business deals and (b) by making lots of enemies. Several of his so-called “handshake deals” (deals that are inevitably complicated, convoluted, and which wind up frequently screwing his friends while he winds up holding the bag of loot at the end) are about to blow up in his face. In fact it’s been suggested to me that Mehdi will soon be facing a private civil suit with purportedly nasty allegations about his business practices.
