Orange County Register

Joe’s Crab Shack in Newport Beach will go on the auction block Dec. 9, one of 12 properties linked to the late accused fraudster Danny Pang that’s being sold by Dec. 11.

The sale of properties formerly owned by Pang or his firm, Private Equity Management Group (PEMGroup), is the latest development in the Securities and Exchange Commission action that accused the Irvine-based investment manager of bilking investors out of $823 million.

The SEC got a court order freezing all of Pang’s assets in April. The estate was turned over to a receiver who is disposing of the properties.

The 12 parcels going up for sale next month — located in Newport Beach, San Clemente, the Inland Empire, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Florida — represent about half of the real estate parcels seized by the government, said Mike Walters, president of Tranzon Asset Strategies, which is handling the sales.

The properties range from a duplex in L.A. to a run-down motel facing demolition in San Clemente. Other properties include offices, vacant hotel land, six condos and a house.

“There was very little rhyme or reason to the investments as far as I could tell,” Walters said. “There’s just a real broad spectrum, is the best way to describe it. There are some good properties in there.”

Among the best properties is the 27,000-square-foot, waterfront parcel on Mariner’s Mile along Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach. The property was assessed at $12.9 million, according to county tax rolls.

In addition to the 49-space parking lot and the 5,100-square-foot restaurant rented to Joe’s Crab Shack, the property has 400 feet of boat slips that can handle up to 10 30- to 50-foot yachts. The slips currently are unrented.

While most of the properties in the sale were owned by PEMGroup entities, the Newport Beach parcel was owned by Pang and his wife.

The auction will be at 10 a.m. Dec. 9 at the property, 2607 W. Coast Hwy.

In San Clemente, Walters’ firm is auctioning off three parcels along the San Diego (5) Freeway, next to San Luis Rey Park. The front two lots, located on South El Camino Real, have an old motel on it that’s to be demo’ed, while the back lot across the alley has a bare slab. The combined taxable value of the properties is $2.4 million.

The auction will be at 1 p.m. Dec. 9 at the property, 2723 S. El Camino Real.

Other auctions will take place from Dec. 4 through 10. Sales of properties in Phoenix, Jacksonville and Tampa are by sealed bids due by Dec. 11. Details can be found at Tranzon’s Web site HERE!

Pang, 42, was facing civil and criminal charges when he died from an apparent suicide at his Newport Beach home in mid-September. The charges stemmed from accusations that he treated PEMGroup like his personal piggy bank, financing a lavish lifestyle from a Ponzi-like scheme. Most of his investors live in his native Taiwan.

Pang, who first surfaced publicly following the 1997 slaying of his first wife, Janie, also was accused of falsely claiming to have an MBA from UC Irvine and to have worked as a senior vice president at Morgan Stanley.

Pang

A Wall Street Journal profile of Pang published Monday had new details of his life (read the story HERE!). Among the revelations:

• A young Pang apparently was caught stealing from friends while living in Nevada — once from a friend’s family’s motel cash register, another time withdrawing cash from a friend’s ATM card — while financing casino sprees and expensive meals with friends.
• Pang claimed to be attending the University of Nevada, Reno, and later UC Irvine, but campus records show he never enrolled.
• While “attending” UC Irvine during the Tiananmen Square democracy protests, Pang became a visible pro-democracy activist who was quoted in the local press speaking out against the Chinese government.
• He was hired by a Santa Ana real-estate development firm until firm partners discovered that he had faked his resume. He reportedly confessed to firm personnel that he had gambled away $2 million in family money from Taiwan he was supposed to use to pay off mortgages on family-owned motels in Las Vegas.
• He used a member of the Irvine family as a front in contacts with Taiwanese bankers.
• Morton Irvine Smith reportedly flew to Taiwan with Pang and met bankers and received them on visits to Orange County, but said he knew nothing of Pang’s claims that PEMGroup received backing from the wealthy Irvine family.
• Smith’s mother, Joan Irvine Smith, was quoted as saying: “I would no more put any money in a project of Morton’s like that than I would go to the moon.”

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