SoCal Real Estate Investor Charged With Nearly $100M Bank Fraud

Federal officials arrested Orange County investor and financier Mahender Makhijani on Wednesday on charges that he defrauded a bank of nearly $100M. 

Makhijani allegedly manipulated title policies, inflating the value of collateral pledged for loans he had with the bank, according to a federal complaint. Although the bank is not named in the complaint, court filings show it is Western Alliance Bank. Western Alliance has a pending case against Makhijani in Los Angeles County Superior Court. 

Makhijani and Continuum Analytics were also named as respondents in an arbitration that earlier this week found he defrauded a business associate and ordered him to pay $1.34B.  

In the fall of 2024, Western Alliance advanced a Makhijani-controlled company called Cantor Group V LLC nearly $100M to originate or buy real estate-backed loans. 

The credit was extended via a warehouse revolving credit facility, a vehicle in which the borrower buys properties that have debt and repays the bank when the loans are sold or paid off. The borrower can continue borrowing against the eligible loans it still holds. Eligible loans are those in which Cantor Group V and Makhijani held the first-lien position. 

Makhijani allegedly altered title insurance policies to make it seem like Cantor was in the first-lien position, which receives priority in instances of foreclosure and is therefore worth more.

In fact, other creditors held more senior positions. Makhijani also made an employee falsify a spreadsheet to back up the doctored title insurance policies and, in teleconferences with bank officials, gave “false explanations” for issues with the title policies, the complaint alleges. 

If the bank had known that the collateral was not as valuable as Makhijani purported, Western Alliance would have considered Cantor to be in default and it would have had to immediately repay the nearly $100M borrowed, leaders of the Arizona-based bank told federal officials.

The attorney representing Makhijani did not immediately respond to a request for comment.  

Since filing its initial complaint, Western Alliance has converted the credit facility to a term loan with a July 2026 maturity date. The loan’s outstanding balance, as of August 2025, was more than $98M. Western Alliance has not yet taken the loss as there are guarantors on the loan that the bank could collect from, according to the federal complaint.