Tax Realty Consultant

The Florida attorney general has filed suit to close a real estate business run by an Allegheny County man already facing investigation for his dealings here and facing trial for tax evasion.

Attorney General Bill McCollum said James C. Platts and his Florida-based company, A Realty Rx, were using deceptive advertising and operating without a real estate broker’s license.

The lawsuit filed this week cites what Mr. McCollum called clearly deceptive “testimonials” from customers the company says it has helped.

Last year, the Post-Gazette detailed Mr. Platts’ dealings in Pennsylvania through another firm, Easy Realty Solutions. Among its findings were Pennsylvania customer “testimonials” on the Easy Realty Solutions Web site with matched, word-for-word testimonials by people listing Florida hometowns.

“We know this individual has a history of fraudulent behavior in other states and we want to make sure Florida consumers are not at risk,” Mr. McCollum said.

The eight-page suit, which asks Florida courts to order A Realty Rx closed, cites those phony testimonials. It also alleges that Mr. Platts and his company “misrepresent that they have the liquid assets to buy houses” when all of Mr. Platts’ bank accounts have been frozen in the wake of a massive lawsuit filed in November by Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett.

Additionally, the Florida complaint says that A Realty Rx has “implied to consumers that they were lawfully selling securities” and “implied to consumers that they were licensed mortgage brokers.”

Florida law enforcement was alerted to Mr. Platts’ practices by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office.

In addition to the pair of civil suits seeking to shut down his companies, Mr. Platts faces a criminal trial in mid-March in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, where he faces multiple counts of tax evasion connected with his now-closed home building business.

Additionally, Mr. Corbett in November announced that he was making a criminal referral to the U.S. attorney, requesting it investigate Easy Realty Solutions. The move followed a summer of complaints by persons who had bought and sold homes through Mr. Platts. They complained that he sold homes with inflated prices, created fraudulent second mortgages, used legal filings called “lis pendens” to extract extra money by tying up the titles to the homes and filed duplicated federal housing forms that showed owners simultaneously selling their homes to Easy Realty and to the actual buyers at different prices