WOMAN ARRESTED IN LAND SCHEME.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Daily News Staff Writer

A former Palmdale real estate broker was arrested Wednesday on charges she defrauded 70 investors of more than $1.4 million in an Antelope Valley land scheme.

Carolina Paredes, 65, who is being held in lieu of $2 million bail, is charged with 44 counts of grand theft and using false statements in the sale of securities.

``She convinced people to give up their life savings in exchange for worthless land,'' said Deputy District Attorney Victor Minjares of the major fraud division. ``The scam has been going on for almost nine years.''

Paredes is expected to be arraigned in Los Angeles Municipal Court later this week. Also named as defendants in the case were Paredes' 38-year-old daughter-in-law, Nenita Paredes of Palmdale, and Gloria Palacol, 59, of Hawaii.

Palacol was arrested Tuesday in Hawaii while Nenita Paredes is not yet in custody, Minjares said. Carolina Paredes turned herself in Wednesday morning at the Palmdale sheriff's station after learning that a warrant was out for her arrest.

The case is similar to that of Marshall Redman, a Beverly Hills businessman who is awaiting trial on charges he swindled buyers, many of them Spanish-speaking immigrants, into purchasing land primarily in the undeveloped Hi Vista area and part of Kern County.

Paredes targeted Filipinos like herself, the majority of them middle-age, working-class people in Hawaii who were not sophisticated in real estate investment, Minjares said.

``A lot of them refinanced their houses or gave their kids' college-education savings to buy the land,'' Minjares said. ``And Gloria Palacol, she was an insurance (saleswoman) who had these people as customers. She knew how much equity they had in their insurance policies.''

Paredes, who ran the Hillside Pines Realty office in Palmdale, gave up her real estate license after the Department of Real Estate sought to revoke it last year, Minjares said.

Her last known residence was in Palmdale.

``She had a house in Palmdale but let it go in a foreclosure,'' Minjares said.

Minjares said Paredes would buy unsubdivided vacant desert land, ``in the middle of nowhere'' in the Antelope Valley and then fly to Hawaii to find prospective buyers.

``She would tell them there was a great opportunity to invest in the Lancaster area. She would tell them of a bullet train from Lancaster to L.A. that was being built now,'' Minjares said.

Paredes also told victims that if they bought land in California, they could send their children to a university in Lancaster for free. She also furnished them with fake maps, Minjares said.

``She also told them they were buying two-, three- or four-acre plots. In reality, the land was unsubdivided. She was selling them percentages of the whole plot of land,'' Minjares said. ``She told them she owned the land free and clear, but there were mortgages on the land which she failed to pay.''

Many of the victims did not realize they were defrauded until police talked to them, Minjares said. One family paid nearly $300,000 for land, Minjares said.