Lender says it lost nearly $10 million in a Philly-based real estate scheme in new lawsuit

A Philadelphia-area real estate broker and a local title agency are facing a lawsuit by a lender, who alleges that they helped a developer client inflate the value of his properties so he could obtain a multimillion-dollar loan that ultimately defaulted.

The lender, California-based Genesis Capital LLC, alleges that Surety Abstract and Keller Williams Philadelphia conspired with developer Travis Robert-Ritter in “a lengthy and extensive loan fraud scheme.”

Genesis gave Robert-Ritter millions of dollars in loans, then lost nearly $10 million when Robert-Ritter’s real estate development business collapsed, the lender’s complaint says.

The Philadelphia Business Journal first reported on the lawsuit.

Genesis alleges that Surety got hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees in exchange for cooperating with the scheme, and that Robert-Ritter “promised illicit cash payments to Keller Williams personnel” in exchange for their help.

A lawyer for Keller Williams Philadelphia, Marvin Haber of Haber Dipaul, said Genesis’ allegations “are without merit and not factually accurate.” Haber said Genesis “is aware that Keller Williams Philadelphia had neither knowledge nor any involvement in any of alleged fraudulent transactions, but filed this lawsuit regardless.”

Surety’s lawyer, Ryan Friel of Marshall Dennehey, said, “We are confident this matter will be resolved in our client’s favor.”

Robert-Ritter started a company called Bloyd Street Capital, which bought homes and remodeled them to rent or sell, according to a 2018 profile of the company published by Philadelphia magazine. He is not named as a defendant in the federal lawsuit, which was filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Robert-Ritter appears to now be practicing law in Florida, and did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit said Robert-Ritter’s business “purchased cheap single-family homes in Philadelphia with the help of Keller Williams and Surety Abstract and rehabilitated them into, among other things, three-unit rentals.”

To get loans to finance that business, the lawsuit alleged, Robert-Ritter got help from Surety Abstract and Keller Williams to make it appear as if several properties, which he bought for $28,000 to $70,000 each, sold a short time later for around $350,000 per home.

“Robert-Ritter advised the Surety Abstract employee that the ‘buyers’ in these fake sales would be entities he had recently formed, but that to conceal his connection to the properties and the fake sales, he would not use his usual address or name in connection with these new entities,” the lawsuit alleged.

Robert-Ritter turned to Keller Williams to make sure the “fake sales” would be listed in public real estate databases, Genesis’ complaint alleged.

Using a list of “fraudulent sales” provided by Robert-Ritter in 2022, the lawsuit alleges, an appraiser for Genesis valued the developer’s 39 properties at more than $13 million. In reality, Genesis alleged, Robert-Ritter bought the properties at an average price of about $66,000 per home.

Genesis lent him $9.6 million based on the appraisal, the complaint said.

Robert-Ritter stopped making payments to Genesis in July 2023 and defaulted on the loans, the complaint said, and the 39 properties ultimately sold for less than $2 million in February 2024.

Lawyers for Genesis, at the international law firm Troutman Pepper Locke, declined to comment on the case.