SAN JOSE — Sales are finally underway for condominiums at a San Jose housing complex that’s among the properties engulfed in a vast Bay Area real estate fraud case that arose after hundreds of investors were swindled.
The 91-unit residential complex is at 1821 Almaden Road in San Jose, a project that was launched by real estate entrepreneur Sanjeev Acharya and his Silicon Sage Builders firm, which both are accused of wide-ranging fraud allegedly perpetrated against investors in several Bay Area projects.
A federal judge shoved Acharya’s real estate empire into receivership after the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a fraud case against the disgraced developer and his company. The judge appointed David Stapleton to act as receiver for the company’s assets.
Stapleton has been overseeing efforts to sell the condos at the 1821 Almaden Road site as a way to raise cash to provide the investors even a tiny amount of compensation for the cash they lost by investing with Acharya and Silicon Sage.
In 2020, the SEC accused Acharya of fraud, claiming he bilked hundreds of unwitting investors, many of them of South Asian heritage, out of more than $100 million.
The court-appointed receiver also has been providing regular updates about progress with property sales to dispose of the assets that had been originally developed or proposed by Acharya.
“17 units are under contract and there has been one closing at Almaden,” the receiver stated in his most recent quarterly update, which Stapleton filed on Nov. 3 with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The development is located in San Jose’s Almaden-Clara Filice district.
The receiver also has been working closely with the state Department of Real Estate, or DRE, to expedite pre-sales of the units even before the complex is fully completed and ready for occupancy.
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“The DRE has approved the amended public report for Almaden which has allowed the project to begin marketing and selling units,” the receiver told the court in the filing. In addition, a completion bond was posted with the state Real Estate Department. This bond, the receiver wrote, “allows units to be sold prior to full construction completion.”
The receiver stated that it encountered lengthy delays in getting final approvals from PG&E so that the utility would provide full electrical and power services for the Almaden building. This process is now finally complete.
“Almaden now has permanent power onsite because PG&E completed bringing electrical utilities from overhead to underground into the project,” the receiver stated in the report.
The sluggish progress for the 1821 Almaden housing development is in sharp contrast to the more brisk pace of selling condominiums in a similarly sized Acharya and Silicon Sage project in Fremont.
The 93-unit Fremont project is owned by an Archarya affiliate called Osgood LLC and is located at 42111 Osgood Road.
“The (Fremont) condominium project owned by Osgood is complete, with 87 units having closed escrow, one in escrow, and five still being marketed for sale,” the receiver stated in its report.
