FRAUD CASE PITS DA AGAINST 2 SUPERVISORS : MOLINA, ANTONOVICH DEMAND ANSWERS.

Byline: David Bloom and Bhavna Mistry Daily News Staff Writers

District Attorney Gil Garcetti clashed Tuesday with two county supervisors over the handling of a criminal case against a Beverly Hills man accused of defrauding dozens of Antelope Valley residents.

Supervisors Michael D. Antonovich and Gloria Molina pressed Garcetti about his department's involvement in the case, complaining that prosecutors should have acted more quickly in filing criminal charges against Marshal Redman.

The 67-year-old Redman is accused of selling land in the Antelope Valley and Kern County without telling buyers that the parcels were illegally subdivided and that they could not build homes on the property without the consent of the other parcel owners.

``There should be a pro-active operation,'' said Antonovich, who represents the Antelope Valley. He requested Garcetti appear before the Board of Supervisors.

Molina complained that Garcetti's staff evaded her office's requests for information.

But Garcetti, who faces re-election in November, said the first priority was to stop the list of victims from growing and recover assets to reimburse the victims for their losses by filing a civil suit.

Garcetti's office thus chose to piggyback on existing investigations by the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office and the Kern County district attorney, whose civil injunction froze the assets of Redmond's two companies and named a receiver to manage them until a final disbursement could be made to victims.

In 1995, Redman agreed to pay $580,000 in civil fines and costs and to allow the liquidation of $30 million in assets as restitution to victims to settle a lawsuit brought by Los Angeles City Attorney James Hahn and Kern County District Attorney Ed Jagels.

``Once you get a civil injunction and a receiver who freezes assets, that best protects your victims,'' Garcetti said. ``Everyone concluded that you should go in and stop the practice with an injunction so there are not any more victims.''

Although $30 million in assets was seized, it remains unclear how much of that real estate, cash and other resources could be liquidated to reimburse victims, Garcetti said.

Once the injunction and asset freeze were in place, the criminal investigation could be developed more fully, to provide the government with a better chance of winning the complex case, Garcetti said.

``Land fraud investigations are not like a robbery or murder,'' Garcetti said. ``They take extraordinary amounts of resources. Are there enough investigators and lawyers? Absolutely not.''

Redman was charged in May with five counts of grand theft and two counts of filing false documents for the land sales. He remains jailed in lieu of $200,000 bail. Asked about reports that Redman has started another company and began selling real estate again, Garcetti conferred briefly with aides and said, ``We're aware of certain facts and can't compromise an investigation that's going on.''

Garcetti was defended by Supervisors Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Zev Yaroslavsky, who noted that many of the problems occurred several years ago.

As well, a number of other county and city departments did a poor job flagging potential problems long before the situation reached the level of criminal prosecutions, they said.

``I don't think he's the problem,'' Yaroslavsky said. ``This was a problem long before he took office. The question is, how do we nip this stuff in the bud?''

After the hour discussion, Garcetti said his deputy prosecutors took about a year to build a case against Redmond before filing eight fraud counts because they were trying to ``build the best case possible.''

Garcetti said he was unsure why Antonovich was asking some of the questions he did during the discussion.

``Maybe it's a political season,'' Garcetti said. ``Maybe he was being entertained.''