Selfies of Sara King from the federal complaint filed against her.
The Southern California lawyer accused of scamming some $10.25 million from a lender based out of the British Virgin Islands to maintain her deluxe suite at a swanky Las Vegas hotel – and a gambling habit – is allegedly still trying to work an angle and obtain more money from the company she allegedly swindled.
"She's texting us nonstop about various fake deals she has," LDR International Limited attorney Ronald Richards told Law&Crime.
Sara Jacqueline King, an attorney based out of Newport Beach, is accused of breach of contract, fraud, and civil theft for allegedly lying about collateral, clients, and connections to obtain 97 different loans over 10 months in 2022 – and then using those funds to support a life of high glamor and hard-living.
According to a lawsuit filed last week, the company made loans to the attorney's eponymous lending service. Those loans were putatively meant to be lent to third parties.
"The purported loans from King Lending to the third-party borrowers were purportedly secured by various forms of collateral, including but not limited to luxury automobiles, boats, yachts, jewelry, watches, precious metal coins, and the earnings from guaranteed professional sports contracts."
In reality, the lawsuit says, no such collateral had been put up. And there were allegedly never any third-party borrowers.
According to Richards, that reign of theft only ended after he worked to have her escorted off the Resorts World Las Vegas property. At the time, he said, she was wearing a hat to travel incognito, and the casino identified her using facial recognition technology.
But, the LDR attorney said, since the lawsuit's filing and resulting media attention, King has reached out with various additional scams.
"She's used to dealing with people who don't know fraudsters," Richards said. "A victim might be into her. But it's easy [for an experienced attorney] to tell about her false offers."
The LDR attorney also said he's been receiving entreaties from a man or woman who identified as "Taylor" but is using King's email address and phone number.
This person, the attorney said, insists there are ways to resolve the issues without the legal system, has been sending "lulling" messages that make no sense, and offering to provide information, asking for some of the claims to be released if some of the money is returned.
"It's all nonsense," Richards said.
The attorney noted that the lawsuit was only filed after King was aware the company knew about the missing funds.
"I had been in communication with her a lot before I filed the lawsuit," Richards told Law&Crime. "I was able to clawback close to $2 million. But she hadn't made any payments for over a year. So, I chalked that up as an interest payment."
Communications eventually broke down, the LDR attorney said, because King wouldn't consent to a review of her gambling records. But her husband – who has since filed for divorce – did.
"I told her that without providing us non-doctored banking records or open, transparent gambling records, I couldn't figure out where some of this money went," Richards said. "Maybe she was trying to put something together, and it just fell apart. But $2 million wasn't going to cut it."
The lawsuit claims King's husband fled to Morocco and substantiated the claims that "King engaged in a massive fraud."
Richards said that he came to believe her partial payments on the balance due were attempts to delay a lawsuit.
"It would have been helpful if she would have mitigated it and at least shown us what she did with some of it, but she wouldn't do that either," Richards said. "If she provided more visibility into how she dissipated the borrowed funds, this would have helped her. She got some goodwill initially by returning some of the money, but by refusing to describe the rest of the funds and how they were misplaced, that eroded any further confidence."
The matter, he said, has since been referred to the California state bar and a Golden State regulatory agency that focuses on finance companies. Criminal charges have not been filed.
The lawsuit by LDR alleges King Lending lost its status as a finance lender in April 2022, meaning the company was unlicensed to engage in such transactions for about six months.
The attorney said he believes there are likely other individual victims out there. And, he said, King has recently told him she is "incapacitated" to avoid responsibility for the loss.
"You can't borrow money for an intended purpose and then gamble it away, provide fake payment and banking records and never use the money as was represented," Richards said. "That's a crime and a fraud."
Law&Crime reached out to an email address associated with King, but no response was received at the time of publication.