A Kingston Developer Was Arrested for Taking a $8.25 Million Deposit and Never Returning It

• Devon Evans was charged for an unapproved pre-sale scheme
• A couple paid $8.25 million as a 50% deposit
• The REB had repeatedly asked for the ads to come down
• Conviction carries up to two years imprisonment

Devon Evans of North American Holdings Limited was charged by the Police Fraud Squad after a Real Estate Board investigation alleged he had been advertising and collecting money for Monteverde Estates, a development at 39 Wellington Drive in Kingston, that had never been approved by the agency in the first place.

The specific charge, fraudulent conversion, stemmed from Evans allegedly collecting J$8.25 million from a couple as a 50 percent deposit on a unit and then failing to return the money once the underlying issues with the development came to light. He was also charged with breaching Sections 26 and 27 of the Real Estate Act, which govern restrictions on pre-payment contracts and on advertising unapproved developments.

REB inspector of investigations Pete Francis said the board had made repeated requests for Evans to remove the Monteverde advertisements and for the company’s website, then to return the deposit, all without success, exhausting the regulator’s non-criminal options before the matter escalated to a formal police fraud charge. Evans was held at his Beverley Hills home and released on J$5 million bail, with his attorney, Tom Tavares-Finson, declining to comment on the allegations beyond confirming they were just charges to be dealt with in court.

The penalty structure behind the charges is modest relative to the deposit at stake: a conviction for entering a pre-payment contract in breach of Section 26 carries a fine of up to J$50,000 in a Resident Magistrate’s Court, or imprisonment for no more than two years, a maximum sentence considerably smaller in practical deterrent value than the $8.25 million deposit the couple had actually lost, the same imbalance this publication has documented across other real estate fraud cases where regulatory penalties lag well behind the financial harm they’re meant to punish.

Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomesnews Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com