A former Seattle real estate agent who operated a real estate investment fund was convicted in US District Court in Seattle of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and multiple counts of wire fraud, money laundering, and tax fraud.
Tamara King, aka Tamara Waln, of Toledo, Ohio, previously resided in Bellevue and Kirkland, Washington. The jury convicted King of eight counts of wire fraud, two counts of money laundering, and three counts of filing a false tax return after an eight-day jury trial.
According to records filed in the case, King’s ex-husband Paul Waln solicited investments in a real estate fund called Halcyon between August 2009 and December 2013. Twenty-two victims, most of whom were Seattle residents, invested $2.25 million in the fund under the belief their funds would be pooled to purchase and renovate an apartment building in West Seattle and then used for other real estate projects. Investors were required to leave their money in the investment pool for 10 years, at which point Waln would return the investment principal and earnings, which he estimated amount to a 20% annual return. Waln stated he was entitled to receive a 1% fee for managing the investment fund.
In 2013, Waln married King and they jointly managed the investment fund. Between February 2014 and December 2018, they conspired to misappropriate money from the fund to pay their personal expenses, transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time from the fund. In some instances, they wrote secret memos characterizing these transfers as “loans,” but the money was never repaid. Investors were never told about the “loans.”
Under the terms of the investment, Waln and King were required to distribute the investment funds to investors in 2019. But by the end of 2018, they had misappropriated all the money. Waln sent investors a letter in December 2018 falsely claiming that the fund’s general contractor had been diagnosed with cancer, adding this would result in a two-to-three-year delay before he would be able to return investors’ money.
Finally, in October 2019, King informed the investors that all the money was gone, and the investment had failed. All the remaining investors lost their entire investments, totaling $2.4 million.
In addition, King failed to report over $1.6 million in income over three tax years. For those three tax years, King reported $188,116 in total income, when she received $1.85 million.
During the trial, King blamed Waln for the misappropriation, claiming Waln told her the “loans” were allowed. However, prosecutors showed King used the funds for expensive jewelry and a Tesla automobile.
King faces considerable prison time: Conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and wire fraud are punishable by up to 20 years in prison, while money laundering is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and filing a false tax return is punishable by up to three years in prison.
Waln pleaded guilty to the wire fraud conspiracy in June and was sentenced to 33 months in prison on Oct. 31.
