Julie Jacobson
Deon Derrico speaks about the birth of his quintuplets during a news conference, Friday, Sept. 20, 2013, at Summerlin Hospital Medical Center in Las Vegas, following their births two weeks earlier in Phoenix.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014 | 10:01 a.m.
Deon Derrico, the father of a set of Las Vegas quintuplets, will wait to have his day in court on real-estate fraud charges.
This morning in North Las Vegas Justice Court, a preliminary hearing for Derrico, 43, was continued until June 20.
Derrico has been charged with forgery, theft and false representation, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Nevada Attorney General’s Office in December. The complaint includes 13 felony counts.
Derrico made news last year when his wife gave birth to five babies, bumping the number of children in the Derrico household to nine. National and local media took an interest in the family’s story. The family was featured in a cover story in the March 9 issue of The Sunday, a sister publication of the Sun.
But authorities maintain Derrico has used several aliases, and fraudulently took over two homes by filling forged quitclaim deeds at the Clark County Recorder’s Office and then renting the houses for profit, court records say.
A quitclaim allows the owner of a home to grant his property to someone else. But the homeowners named in the court documents had no idea they were transferring their property to Derrico, prosecutors say — because he forged their signatures on the quitclaim deeds.
Derrico refused to comment to several news outlets outside the hearing.
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