Opinion ID: 713017
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Beach Club of Marco Island Loans.

Text: 12 In 1984, Vebeliunas formed Panagra in order to acquire the Beach Club of Marco Island (the Beach Club), a condominium hotel in Florida. On February 1, Panagra contracted with Broward Management Company to purchase twenty-seven units of the Beach Club for $2,080,812. This transaction required Panagra to produce a down payment of $310,000. Vebeliunas caused Stephen Hill, an attorney and part-time Kasa employee, to file for a loan in the amount of $310,000 from Kasa. Without Hill's knowledge, Vebeliunas later altered the application by changing the amount of the loan to $350,000. The Kasa board of directors approved the $350,000 loan to Hill based upon the false representation that Hill was in a contractual relationship with Panagra. 13 Vebeliunas then raised the rest of the money for Panagra to purchase the twenty-seven units by persuading twenty-seven individuals to apply for loans from Kasa. While each loan application stated that the individual was making a deposit of approximately $20,000 of his own funds, in fact, each individual paid only $4,750, with the remainder to be supplied by Litas. These twenty-eight loans (including the Stephen Hill loan) were not separately charged in the present prosecution because they were time barred, but the loans were charged as predicate acts under the RICO count. 14 Next, Vebeliunas sought to acquire the remaining Beach Club units. He paid Edwin Stots $10,000 to file a Kasa loan application in the amount of $700,000 in order to raise the money necessary for this endeavor, and Stots testified that Vebeliunas had told Stots that another person named Rimas was doing the same thing. This testimony is corroborated by a Kasa loan application filed by Vebeliunas' wife's brother-in-law, Rimas Valaitis, in the amount of $700,000. The funds from these two loans were subsequently used by Panagra to purchase the remaining Beach Club units. 15 The Stots and Valaitis loans were never fully repaid. When Kasa was placed in conservatorship, the balance on these loans amounted to approximately $627,000. 16