Pasadena Star News: Former developers in ill-fated El Monte Transit Village project indicted on fraud charges

John Leung and Bart Doyle. Two bros back in the day.

Long time readers of The Tattler will know all about this story. Back in the earliest days of this blog we closely covered the story of El Monte's "Billion Dollar Bus Station," a get rich quick scheme that was conveniently backed by a whole lot of taxpayer money. Federal and state. Big primitive regional planning organizations like SCAG were intimately involved as well (link). And as many here are also well aware, the whole stinking mess blew up quite gloriously back in 2011. It was quite a scandal.

As you will now find out thanks to the following Pasadena Star News article (link), the party is hardly over. Apparently we are today moving into the prosecutorial phase of the drama, and of course we will be following all of that quite closely. Because there is a very Sierra Madre angle to all of this, as I will happily share with you in a minute.


The rest of this article can be found by hitting the link we posted at the beginning of this page. And if you want to check out that chronology of events they've put together about the failed El Monte Transit Village disaster, you can click here.

Now you might be wondering what the Sierra Madre connection to all of this is, and of course we are glad to share that with you. Apparently former Sierra Madre Mayor Bart Doyle, who recently emerged from wherever it is that he hangs out to offer his support for utility tax boondoggle Measure UUT, was also a big name at the Titan Group. He ran into a little legal trouble himself back in 2011.

Here is how we described all this in October of that year (link):

Former Sierra Madre Mayor Bart Doyle and Others Named In Lawsuit Filed by the City of El Monte- The San Gabriel Valley Tribune is going with a shocker of a story this morning, one that reaches right into the very heart of certain centers of influence here in Sierra Madre.

The article is titled "El Monte accuses contractor of fraudulently obtaining federal, state and city funds," and can be accessed by clicking here.

This follows several recently published reports that both the FBI and HUD have been involved in the investigations swirling around the ill-fated El Monte Transit Village, pejoratively known as the "Billion Dollar Bus Station." With HUD's concern also centered around improperly used government funding for what has become quite a redevelopment debacle.  

Here's that 2011 newspaper account.


You can read the rest of this one by clicking here.

So why wasn't Bart Doyle arrested by the Feds last week along with his former "Billion Dollar Bus Station" business associates John Leung and Jean Lang? I really have no idea.

But I can venture this guess. Perhaps he has agreed to become a witness for the prosecution?

We just might have to head on down to the courts for the trial and see what is up.

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