United States v. Real Property Located at 20832 Big Rock Drive, Malibu, Ca 90265, Hour Holdings, Ltd., Claimant-Appellant

Hour Holdings is a limited partnership formed exclusively for the purpose of owning a house on Big Rock Drive in Malibu, California. The partnership ostensibly has several partners, but all the money for the purchase of the house was funneled through one couple, Greg Allen and Lisa Santulli. Allen located the house and arranged to buy it from its previous owner, a known drug-dealer and business associate of Allen’s named Charles Goldman. Apparently, Allen was himself a bit of a drug dealer, though none of the partners in Hour Holdings (except perhaps Santulli) seems to have been involved.

Drug dealers who buy houses from drug dealers often use drug money to make the purchase. In this case the circumstances of the sale were particularly suspicious: Each of the limited partners in Hour Holdings was a family member or friend of Allen’s and Santulli’s; each invested a large sum of money in the property practically sight-unseen; each paid with an untraceable cashier’s cheek or cash. The DEA thus had cause to believe Hour Holdings was a sham, that Allen had received the house as part of a drug deal with Goldman, and that the partners in Hour Holdings either knew this when they invested…