The failed business deals were remarkably similar to the pitch the woman calling herself Tricia Cohen was making to fire survivors years later in Paradise. In interviews, they told The Bee that a woman they knew as Patty Cohen and her former husband, Michael, took their investments in deals involving shipments of Chinese products and never returned their money. The Bee used court documents to track down three of Cohen’s former investors. Sabalow began pulling court records from the judgments awarded against Cohen in Washington state, Nevada and Florida. The records also revealed that in 2007, the IRS put a $190,905 tax lien on the Cohens’ homes in Florida and Nevada. They totaled at least $736,111 in judgments issued between 20. Using that information, Jim Ellis, a retired FBI agent and certified fraud examiner from Texas whom Sabalow interviewed, was able to run a background check that provided a comprehensive list of her and her ex-husband’s history of court judgments. Most of her customers in Paradise never actually met her in person, and it’s unclear where she actually lives.īut her customers in Paradise shared with The Bee emails and phone numbers that she’d been using to contact them. “Patricia Cohen” also is a common name that made using background check search programs or searching social media a challenge. As far as The Bee could learn, Cohen has never been charged with a crime.
It was trickier to learn more about Tricia Cohen, the owner of Cubic Quarters. Documents also showed that Soderling and his wife Jessica, who worked with her husband at Aurora Ridge, had been convicted on tax charges in 2015. Kasler read decades-old news accounts from his trials and reviewed hundreds of pages of criminal court records and transcripts of congressional hearings about his role in the 1980s savings and loan crisis. Uncovering the lengthy criminal history of Jay Soderling, the founder of Aurora Ridge Homes, was a relatively simple matter.
Sabalow and reporter Dale Kasler conducted dozens of interviews, reviewed hundreds of pages of court documents and other public records, did some social media sleuthing and enlisted the help of a retired FBI agent.