The alleged scheme began in 2020 and lasted until mid-2023, targeting investors in the United States, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East.
A new civil lawsuit expands the scope of “the largest known real estate fraud scheme in Baltimore history” with new defendants and additional allegations involving dozens of properties in an investment fraud that spanned the globe and resulted in millions of dollars in damages.
The complaint, first reported by the Baltimore Sun, adds alleged co-conspirators Patrick Cox and Kevin Dunlap to an earlier sentence against former ABC Capital CEO Jason Walsh. The complaint builds on an existing $5.6 million judgment against Walsh and adds 17 counts of “false real estate transfers” and 44 property improvements that were allegedly paid for but never completed.
The alleged scheme began in 2020 and lasted until mid-2023. The scams are believed to have targeted investors in the United States, Asia, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. The plan was to give investors access to Baltimore’s distressed housing market and to persuade them to buy rowhouses, renovate them, and turn them into rentals.
Rather, the lawsuit alleges that the defendants engaged in a “systematic fraud that involved forging deeds, forging signatures, forging remittance confirmations, and misappropriating renovation funds,” according to court filings.
Former Deputy Attorney General Thiru Vignarajah and lead plaintiff Serkan Gökmena explained the inner workings of the fraud scheme at a press conference on Monday, presenting voice notes, text messages and emails that support their claims.
At Walsh’s direction, Cox and Dunlap allegedly created fake email accounts in the names of real buyers or purported buyers and provided those addresses to title companies so they could send approval requests. The three then allegedly logged into the fake accounts and signed documents on behalf of the buyers.
Walsh allegedly instructed the men to make up names and personal information in order to complete the transaction. In one case, “make up a name like a Turkish name, a name like Omar, for the buyer,” he said. On another occasion, he criticized men’s “cheating” in forging signatures.
Walsh allegedly instructed Cox and Dunlap to use a virtual private network (VPN) to mask their IP addresses so that the emails appeared to come from or to the victim’s country of origin. At one point, Mr. Cox complained about this practice, saying that his email account was “starved” and that it was difficult to obtain a new phone number.
This is not Mr. Walsh’s first encounter with the legal system. Separate from an existing judgment in Baltimore County, the state of Pennsylvania in November fined Mr. Walsh $350,000 for violating a settlement agreement with the state attorney general for failing to maintain residential properties, failing to obtain rental licenses and failing to use a professional property manager.
Large-scale real estate fraud is common in Baltimore. In October 2025, a New York-based fraud ring snapped up more than 700 properties across the city and subsequently defaulted on $100 million in loans, resulting in hundreds of foreclosures and the evicting of hundreds of tenants in majority-Black neighborhoods.
Email Christy Murdoch
