Right On Daily Diane Harkey Series: Why I Believe Everyone Should Think Twice Part 2, Sham Divorce and Hiding Assets to Avoid the Lawsuit Judgement?

While I am not convinced that Dan and Diane Harkey did anything criminally illegal I can certainly understand how the people in this photo feel.

This was originally posted in 2021.

On 7-11-2013, Dan Harkey was found civilly liable for fraud and elder abuse by a court in Orange County over the failure of Point Center Financial. The judgement would later settle in at $12,500,000. To the best of my knowledge, not a dime has been repaid. It appears Dan Harkey lost his real estate license, the SEC did not find securities fraud, nor did other agencies find wire fraud. It appears that Dan Harkey is an effective liar who got people to invest in high-risk real estate deals (called Hard Money Lending) most of which failed.

Records I have obtained indicate that Dan Harkey has had as many as 40 entities he formed, several list attachements of some sort to Diane Harkey. If Mark Wyland had done his homework, he would have beaten the overturning of the Anti-SLAPP he got against Diane Harkey in 2015. He’d have won on the basis of this statement alone. Mark Wyland got sued by Diane Harkey in 2013 for defamation because he said something to the effect that her money is dirty and her campaigns were funded with it. We know that Diane Harkey took campaign cash from people who did business with Dan Harkey – several of who defaulted on their loans causing the people that sued Dan Harkey successfully to lose significant amounts of money.

“I’ve been married for 25 years to my husband,” said the Dana Point Republican. “We have personal income. He has income. I have income. Sometimes it was my income. Sometimes it was his income. Sometimes it’s both of our incomes. And I’ve saved him financially many years. So I’m not going to get into whose, yours, mine, ours. Who knows after 25 years?” – Diane Harkey 2009 in the LA Times.

5 months after Dan Harkey lost the lawsuit judgement, Diane Harkey created DHJP2, LLC. 

In 2014, a series of real estate transactions occurred involving DHJP2, LLC. I also believe that Diane Harkey may have been thinking about this when she lied / grossly deceived John Chiang in her letter of 8-5-2014. In that letter she claimed to be in the process of filing a divorce and legally separated. Both were patently untrue at the time of the letter according to my research (namely a lack of anything related on the County of Orange’s website and no other court records anywhere else).

From 2014 – 2020 Harkey’s personal residence, worth some 5,600,000 was moved between various trusts. In 2014, it appears that money was put in to the transaction. My guess is it was an attempt to shield some assets. However, the amount does not appear to have been large by Harkey standards. The current mortgage is a fraction of the home’s value and could be a line of credit as the records I have are not specific. The point is that Diane Harkey’s primary residence is in a trust – a common tactic for shielding assets from lawsuits and liability. Not illegal but fishy with the backdrop.

In 4-15-2014, 31212 Paseo Miraloma, San Juan Capistrano, California, 92675 – was transferred from Diane Harkey’s name in to the LLC. The LLC recently sold the property to a third party. While not illegal, moving the house in to the LLC would have been done in anticipation of other major financial decisions (coming soon). The sale price in 2020 was around $1.1 Million. What I found fascinating were notations from Don Mealing, Mealing Family Trust on this property suggesting that Mealing – a key plantiff against Dan Harkey took a run at this property.

There are several properties that at one time appeared on Diane Harkey’s disclosure forms, all were dumped in 2014 while Dan and Diane Harkey were still married. All were dumped by another LLC called Dig Pmb Note LLC that appears to have been a conduit for these properties as the previous owner was Dan Harkey, or Dan and Diane Harkey via a trust.

34021 Copper Lantern St Dana Point, California, 92629 Sold for 758,610.00 June 24, 2014.

33931 Copper Lantern St Dana Point, California, 92629 Sold for 792,919.00 June 10, 2014.

33941 Silver Lantern St Dana Point, California, 92629 Sold for 1,620,148.00 June 10, 2014.

33791 Violet Lantern St Dana Point, California, 92629 Sold for 1,076,922.00 June 10, 2014. (an interesting note, the Form 700 lists the name Lisa Bartlett. Apparently, Harkey was Bartlett’s landlord at the time?)

Please see Diane Harkey’s 2013 Form 700 – all of the above properties are listed. The form 700 also mentions DHJP2, LLC for the first time as Diane moved some property in to it to keep past the asset dumping of mid 2014 apparently as well.

In addition, there are at least three pieces of property sold around that period of time that Diane Harkey had an ownership interest in at some point in the past. None of these were listed on her form 700’s however. This further decimates her narrative that her personal finances are separated from Dan Harkey’s and any claims she did not benefit from his businesses are absurd.

While not illegal, Dumping $4.5 Million worth of property within a year of losing a massive lawsuit smells to high heaven. Moving a couple pieces of property in to DHJP2, LLC also smells. It looks like they were draining assets out of the marital estate, with the process starting in late 2013 just months after the judgement – and after Dan Harkey filed an appeal (that he lost in 2018).

How much of that money did Diane Harkey get? She was still married to Dan Harkey at the time and had to know that he was dumping several properties in the months following the lawsuit!

Did Dan Harkey file the appeal to stall for time in order to facilitate the dumping of assets?

At the same time she was playing the victim in public, on 8-5-2014 claiming she was legally separated and in the process of filing a divorce. Was dumping $4 Million worth of property part of the “process of filing a divorce” in order to keep that money away from the victims?

So about that Sham Divorce? For those of you that know about divorces, a couple married nearly 30 years with a ton of assets is usually a 2-3 year deal to get final. The Harkey’s divorce was final in just 4.5 months. Details on that and more as we continue.