Second OneCap company seeks bankruptcy protection

By Steve Green

Monday, July 19, 2010 | 10:56 a.m.

Another OneCap real estate lending entity filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation in Las Vegas on Friday, meaning investors who placed hundreds of thousands of dollars with OneCap may face delays in pursuing fraud claims against OneCap.

Controlled by businessman Vince Hesser, the OneCap companies, like other hard-money lenders, combined investors' funds and loaned them to real estate developers.

This industry boomed in Las Vegas during the growth years of the 2000s as investors were attracted by high interest rates and developers turned to hard money lenders when they couldn't or chose not to obtain traditional bank financing.

With the recession pushing many of the riskier hard-money projects into default, investors have sued several Las Vegas hard-money lenders in recent years claiming they were misled about the projects they invested in and that in the servicing of their investments they weren't treated fairly by the hard-money lenders.

In Hesser's case, OneCap Mortgage Corp. in May had its mortgage broker's license revoked by the state Division of Mortgage Lending after a series of enforcement actions by the agency dating to 2007.

In June, an associated company, OneCap Holding Corp., filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation.

On Friday, OneCap Mortgage itself filed for Chapter 7 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Las Vegas.

OneCap Mortgage's filing listed estimated assets of zero to $50,000 and liabilities of $100,000 to $500,000.

The bankruptcy was filed by attorney Michael Dawson.

Another OneCap attorney, Frederick Santacroce, on Friday transferred to the bankruptcy court a lawsuit that has been pending in Clark County District Court pitting investors against Hesser, OneCap and related entities.

The plaintiffs in the 2007 case are Jacques Massa, Philip Hight, Emilie Lieuwen-Hight and Harvey Selcer.

The defendants are OneCap Mortgage, Ascendant Universal Fund I LLC, OneCap Partners MM Inc., OneCap Mortgage II, Hesser and Heidi Williams, said to be a OneCap vice president at the time.

The suit alleges fraud, negligence, breach of contract and other claims and seeks money that is now part of the bankruptcy estate, Santacroce wrote in his filing.

The suit claims the nonbankrupt defendants are "alter egos" of OneCap, or acted as one entity, and asks that the bankruptcy court sort out the existence or extent of any alter ago relationships.

OneCap, the lawsuit says, made loans in Arizona, California, Colorado and Nevada.

"Hesser and Williams conspired with each other to use their control over the OneCap defendants to induce plaintiffs into investing in OneCap's loans under false pretenses," the lawsuit charges.

The suit claims Hesser and Williams misrepresented the value of the real estate securing the plaintiffs' investments, failed to disclose interests held by the OneCap defendants in the projects, failed to disclose that affiliates of OneCap were borrowers on some of the projects and misrepresented the extent of improvements on the real estate securing the loans.

OneCap is also accused in the suit of breaching its fiduciary duties to the investors by obtaining loan extensions -- without disclosing OneCap's ownership interest -- rather than pursuing other remedies against defaulting borrowers; and of "furthering OneCap's own undisclosed interests in the projects ... at the expense of the investors' interests."

In responding to the claims, OneCap attorneys have denied the allegations.

They also unsuccessfully tried to have the dispute referred to arbitration, writing in a court filing: "Plaintiffs and defendants are sophisticated in real estate and business transactions. It is inconceivable that the plaintiffs did not sufficiently understand the terms and conditions for which they bargained in these loan servicing agreements."