A federal grand jury indicted a Granite Bay developer and Roseville escrow agent Thursday for allegedly scheming to get loans at inflated amounts on commercial and residential real estate. 

Abolghasseni “Abe” Alizadeh, 56, of Granite Bay, and Mary Sue Weaver, 62, of Roseville, are charged with a total of 21 counts of mail, wire and bank fraud in connection with schemes to defraud lenders in large commercial real estate transactions between mid-2004 and April 2008.

According to court documents, Alizadeh, a property developer, was formerly the principal partner in Kobra Properties, a company that owned numerous commercial real estate properties in Northern California. Alizadeh also owned dozens of restaurants in the area. 

Although his assets at one point had an estimated value of $1 billion, Kobra and several other entities controlled by Alizadeh filed for bankruptcy in 2008. Weaver was an escrow officer with Placer Title Company. 

The indictment alleges that Weaver and Alizadeh engaged in a scheme to get loans at inflated amounts on commercial and residential real estate. To carry out the scheme, Alizadeh allegedly would submit false information, including altered purchase contracts for million-dollar property purchases, to federally insured banks in order to make it appear that Alizadeh was purchasing the properties for a greater amount than the actual purchase price. 

According to court documents, Weaver assisted the fraud scheme in various ways, including by taking the money belonging to other Placer County clients and temporarily moving the funds into accounts controlled by Alizadeh.

If convicted, Alizadeh and Weaver face a maximum statutory penalty of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine for each count.