'It almost felt like you could trust him.' How feds say an Austin con man stole millions

Eric Perardi rolled over from a night of fitful sleep, waiting for the phone call from a friend that finally came at 6:15 a.m. Perardi, an Austin real estate developer, had been warned the night before that the call from Saint Jovite Youngblood would arrive from a blocked number. Youngblood, whom Perardi had known for five years, told the developer that he’d be there within the hour with urgent, troubling news that had to be delivered in person. Clad in his signature all-black cargo pants, dark-colored T-shirt and Crocs, Youngblood bounded into Perardi’s Steiner Ranch home. Against the chirping of the birds, the two men paced back and forth on Perardi’s balcony that June 2022 morning with the backdrop of a majestic Hill Country overlook. “Look, I found out a really frightening piece of information,” said Youngblood, who Perardi believed was a top-secret federal agent with high-level CIA clearance.

He explained that Los Zetas, a Mexican drug cartel known for its viciousness and even beheading rivals, had put out a hit on Perardi and his children — that they could be kidnapped and killed as soon as that day. Perardi, whose projects include the Crossover in Cedar Park and medical office parks, sank in a chair, still in his pajamas, with head-to-toe terror. “They believe I had all this money from projects I’ve done,” he remembers Youngblood telling him. He also said the cartel knew that Perardi had a multimillion-dollar life insurance policy. In further describing the encounter, Perardi said Youngblood offered instant protection: Perardi could give him $70,000 that he’d use to pay off the cartel. Perardi wrote him a check right then and there. And over the next several months, Perardi and federal investigators say, he paid Youngblood up to $900,000 that he had believed Youngblood used to satisfy cartel demands. Federal documents say it was an epic fraud — a magistrate judge called the crimes “the most massive pattern of intimidation of threats and violence and death I have ever seen” — that ensnared at least 20 victims in Austin and across the nation. FBI agents say in court documents that Youngblood — a 51-year-old husband and father living in a 4,000-square-foot Manor home with no documented employment — scammed millions of dollars in recent years, including from victims who believed their safety depended on high-dollar payoffs. They say Youngblood used the threats as a ruse to get money that he squandered at posh Las Vegas casinos. “All I can say is, ‘wow,’” U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Lane told Youngblood in an August detention hearing. “The number of lies, the depth of those lies, is beyond anything I have ever heard. Absolutely incredible. ... The weight of the evidence is absolutely against you, Mr. Youngblood.”