A 44-year-old Corona del Mar man accused of defrauding a bank out of nearly $100 million after federal prosecutors allege he falsified title-insurance policies to make his collateral look more valuable to lenders was taken into custody on Wednesday, June 10.
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Mahender Makhijani — who controls Newport Beach-based Cantor Group V — has been charged with defrauding an undisclosed bank, according to a federal complaint.
Cantor has a lending relationship with the bank, prosecutors said, which agreed to advance nearly $100 million to him.
Cantor was expected to use the money to “originate or buy loans secured by real estate,” prosecutors wrote. Cantor was required to pledge the secured loans to the bank.
Cantor was only supposed to pledge to the bank loans in which it held the first lien in the underlying collateral.
That meant, for those loans, that the bank would be first in line to foreclose on a property if the borrower went into default. A second lien, or later, was less valuable to the bank, because another creditor or more would be ahead of it in line if a default occurred, prosecutors added.
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The bank required Cantor to submit title-insurance policies that showed Cantor’s first-lien positions.
Prosecutors allege that Makhijani provided the bank with falsified title-insurance policies that made it look like Cantor was in the first-lien position in some real estate loans. Makhijani forced an employee to submit the allegedly falsified title-insurance policies to the bank, prosecutors added, and lied about the title issues during a teleconference with representatives from the bank.
Had the bank known about the true value of the collateral that Cantor had pledged, it would have considered Cantor in default and demanded a full and immediate repayment of the nearly $100 million loan.
In 2025, the bank filed a lawsuit alleging the fraud. It was unclear if the bank lost funds.
Now, if convicted of the charges he is facing in the criminal complaint, Makhijani faces up to 30 years in federal prison.
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