D. Edward Hays and the Beverly Hills Connection to a $75 Million SoCal RICO Lawsuit
A federal RICO complaint filed in the Southern District of California alleges a sprawling conspiracy stretching from La Jolla to Beverly Hills, naming 15 defendants in a scheme to seize a San Diego County software company through fraud, identity theft, and corrupted legal proceedings.
Drive south on the 5 from Burbank and in two hours you hit La Jolla, where a software company called TopDevz once occupied offices at 7460 Girard Avenue. Take the 405 to Newport Beach and you reach the law offices of Cummins & White. Cut over to Corona del Mar and you find Grace Fellowship Church, where one attorney allegedly recruited another into the scheme. Head to Beverly Hills and you reach the former offices of Marshack Hays LLP, home of D. Edward Hays, whom the complaint calls “the architect of the bankruptcy fraud schemes.”
The geography reads like a map of Southern California’s professional class. And a 185-page RICO complaint filed January 6, 2026, alleges these locations are connected not just by freeways but by a criminal enterprise that used SoCal’s legal, tech, and business networks as its operating infrastructure. Fifteen defendants. More than 750 predicate acts. Approximately $75 million in fraudulent transactions.
The Company
TopDevz LLC placed elite software contractors with clients including HBO, DriveTime, Procore, and Becton Dickinson from its La Jolla headquarters. By 2021, total revenue had reached nearly $30 million. Its core asset was a 2.5 million-record contractor database — the kind of curated talent pool that SoCal’s entertainment studios, tech firms, and defense contractors depend on for project-based work.
Tyler Brandon Davis of Folsom held a 49% minority membership with no managerial authority. The lawsuit alleges he spent eight years building infrastructure to take control anyway — through wire fraud, identity theft, money laundering, and obstruction of justice.
The SoCal Attorney Network
Scott Carpenter of Cummins & White in Newport Beach (CalBar #144259) is accused of serving as the enterprise’s litigation weapon — allegedly seizing bank accounts through false wire representations, forging stock certificates for a company that had no stock, and filing hundreds of fraudulent pleadings. Stanford BA. UCLA JD.
J. Douglas Kirk of Kirk & Toberty in Irvine was allegedly recruited through Grace Fellowship Church in Corona del Mar — a personal relationship turned into a professional pipeline.
D. Edward Hays (CalBar #162507) of Marshack Hays LLP, a USC law graduate and past president of the California Bankruptcy Forum, is described as the architect of the bankruptcy fraud component. The complaint alleges he filed false declarations under penalty of perjury.
Six attorneys from five firms, all operating in Southern California. The professional networks that allegedly enabled this scheme are the same kind of overlapping legal, tech, and social connections that drive business across the region.
La Jolla to Solana Beach: The Data Heist
In January 2022, two TopDevz employees allegedly downloaded the entire 2.5 million-record database and 3,784 confidential files, then destroyed over 130 client projects. Three weeks later, former COO Josh Lintz incorporated TalentCrowd LLC in Wyoming and set up at 125 S Highway 101 in Solana Beach — a few miles up the coast. The woman who allegedly downloaded the database became CEO.
TalentCrowd reportedly generated over $12 million in its first year. Nobody builds a staffing company to that scale in 33 days. The complaint argues you do it by taking one.
The Bankruptcy Play
When TopDevz’s founder filed Chapter 11 in February 2024, the complaint alleges Davis and Hays treated it as the closing mechanism for the takeover. A court-appointed trustee allegedly settled $75 million in claims for $200,000. Then the remaining estate claims were sold to Davis for $100,000 — meaning the man accused of orchestrating the fraud purchased the legal right to pursue claims arising from his own alleged crimes.
The California Court of Appeal issued a stay order in October 2025. Appeals remain pending.
The Acquisition
TalentCrowd was acquired by Ohio-based GBQ Partners LLC in February 2025. The complaint alleges the operation now generates $50,000 or more per day from the database the plaintiffs say was stolen in La Jolla three years earlier.
What This Means Locally
SoCal’s entertainment and technology industries create exactly the kind of high-value IP environments where this type of scheme can take root. A curated contractor database. A client roster built over years. These are the assets SoCal companies build businesses around, and they are precisely what the complaint alleges was stolen.
The professional networks connecting La Jolla to Newport Beach to Beverly Hills are a feature of doing business here. But the TopDevz case illustrates what can happen when those networks are allegedly weaponized — when church connections become recruitment channels, when attorneys across three counties allegedly coordinate as participants in a criminal enterprise, and when the legal system itself is allegedly used to complete a takeover that could not have been accomplished through legitimate means.
The case remains pending. All allegations are unproven civil claims. No findings have been made by any court.
