Chauncey Bailey Project

Your Black Muslim Bakery ex-associate charged with real-estate fraud

Exterior of Your Black Muslim Bakery Nov. 30, 2005. (Bob Larson/Contra Costa Times)
Exterior of Your Black Muslim Bakery Nov. 30, 2005. (Bob Larson/Contra Costa Times)

 

By Josh Richman

Bay Area News Group

A former Your Black Muslim Bakery associate is charged with three other men in a suspected real estate fraud scheme that cost two investors nearly $77,000.

Court documents say the bakery associate, Jamall Robinson, and Cordell Hayes, Jhamel Robinson and Marvin Woods falsified deeds to make it look like they owned five properties in Emeryville and Oakland, and then sold them over the Internet.

Woods pleaded no contest Monday to a single felony forgery count and is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 26. Jamall Robinson and Jhamel Robinson are scheduled to appear in court Thursday morning in Oakland; Hayes remains wanted on warrants issued in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

The now-defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery, based on San Pablo Avenue in North Oakland, long was thought to be a community organization empowering young black men, but in the mid-2000s it was exposed as part organized-crime family and part cult, with crimes from fraud to murder attributed to its many members.

Jamall Robinson — who also has gone by the names Aafiya Akbar Muhammad, Yasir Hakeem Azzem and Jamal Bey — was among bakery associates charged with aiding bakery CEO Yusuf Bey IV in the 2005 vandalism of two North Oakland liquor stores, attacks caught on videotape that made national headlines. Prosecutors in 2007 dropped those charges against Robinson.

Bey IV is serving three consecutive life prison terms for ordering the 2007 killings of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey and two other men, Odell Roberson and Michael Wills. Even as the Bey IV triple-murder trial unfolded in 2011, Jamall Robinson and his cohorts were carrying on the bakery’s tradition of fraud, prosecutors now say.

According to court papers, Chi Chong Lee in 2011 paid Jamall Robinson $27,799 by wire transfer to buy 1271 Ocean Ave. in Emeryville — a property that actually belonged to Jamall Robinson’s aunt, but for which he, Hayes and Jhamel Robinson filed a bogus deed. Hayes signed a deed conveying to Lee a slightly different address — 1272 Ocean Ave. — that does not exist.

Lee also paid $22,000 for another Emeryville property, also owned by someone else, according to the court documents.

And from March through June 2011, Edward Pak made wire transfers totaling $26,850 to Jamall Robinson for an Emeryville house and an Oakland property. Again, the owners’ signatures reportedly were forged on deeds.

Jamall Robinson is charged with three counts each of grand theft and forgery, and two counts each of identity theft and offering a false or forged legal document. Hayes faces five counts each of forgery and offering a false or forged document, three counts of grand theft and two counts of identity theft. And Jhamel Robinson faces three counts of grand theft and two counts each of forgery, identity theft and offering a false or forged document.

Elena Condes, Jamall Robinson’s attorney, could not be reached by phone or email late Wednesday afternoon.

Jamall Robinson’s aunt sued him in 2011, accusing him of forging her signature on a deed and kicking her out of her Ocean Avenue home. A judge in May voided the bogus deed documents and returned the house to her. The judge also ordered Robinson and his businesses to pay her $20,000 by August 2014, and ordered Hayes and Cassandra Matthews — Robinson’s mother — to pay her about $3,600.

Another 2011 lawsuit accused Jamall Robinson of a similar fraud involving a Texas investor and three Richmond homes, only one of which actually belonged to Robinson. That case was dismissed in August. The Texas man couldn’t be reached for comment.

But Hayes later in 2011 was charged with filing a false document regarding one of the Richmond properties. A Contra Costa County deputy district attorney, Ken McCormick, said Wednesday that Hayes failed to appear for his Sept. 11 court date and there is now a warrant for his arrest.

While reporting on the investor lawsuits in 2011, this reporter received a call from a man identifying himself as Cordell Hayes who threatened, “If you write that story, you are going to end up like your friend Chauncey.” Police investigated, but no arrest was made.

Robinson filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2011. But a judge tossed out his case the next year after the federal attorney handling it said Robinson had lied about or withheld information about his assets and income and failed to provide tax returns and other documents.

Other bakery associates have been accused of real-estate fraud over the years. Bey IV, along with four other men, was charged with forgery, grand theft and identity theft on suspicion of using bogus information to get home loans totaling more than $6 million from 10 different lenders to buy 12 East Bay houses.

Those charges against Bey IV were dropped after he was sentenced for the Bailey, Roberson and Wills murders.

Josh Richman covers politics. Contact him at 510-208-6428. Follow him at Twitter.com/josh_richman. Read the Political Blotter at IBAbuzz.com/politics.

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