Former real estate CEO Michael Lyon back in Sacramento County Jail on drug charges
Former Sacramento real estate titan Michael Lyon is back in jail again, being held in custody on drug and parole violations, The Sacramento Bee has learned.
Lyon, 64, was released from state prison last year after serving part of a six-year, four-month sentence handed down in 2018 over his conviction on charges of electronic eavesdropping and videotaping connected to sex tapes filmed in 2013 and 2014.
Online booking records for the Sacramento County Main Jail, where Lyon has previously been held over the years, show he was arrested Monday night on a felony charge of possession for sale of controlled substances and a misdemeanor count of possession of dangerous drug controlled substances.
“Officers conducted a parole search on Mr. Lyon, and during the course of the search located narcotics,” Sacramento Police spokesman Officer Karl Chan wrote in an email to The Bee. “He was arrested in the 300 block of Las Palmas Avenue.” The street in the Noralto section of North Sacramento is near Norwood Avenue.
Lyon who was on supervised parole, is being held without bail and is scheduled to make a video court appearance Thursday afternoon.
His attorney, Linda Parisi, said she did not have details about the arrest and had been encouraged about his progress since his release from state custody.
“He was doing so well,” Parisi said. “What was being presented to me was really very positive.”
Lyon was once one of the most prominent business and philanthropic figures in the Sacramento region, and until his legal troubles headed the Lyon Real Estate firm and other companies. He was a Boy Scout leader and civic activist who donated time and money to various charitable causes.
But his weakness for prostitutes and secret videotapes led to a stunning fall from grace that began with an acrimonious divorce.
During the divorce, the FBI began a probe in 2009 into allegations that he possessed pornographic materials, and FBI documents reviewed by The Bee indicated he had been secretly videotaping friends, employees and others in his homes as far back as as far back as 1992, when a newly married couple accused him of placing a camera hidden in a guest shower.
Federal officials never charged Lyon, citing statute of limitations and evidence issues. But then-District Attorney Jan Scully opened her own probe at the urging of family members of victims.
He entered a guilty plea in 2011 after evidence surfaced that he had secretly taped interactions with women, and was sentenced to two years in state prison. That sentence was suspended and he served nearly a year in the county jail and on home detention.
His attorney at the time, William Portanova, was in the process of trying to get Lyon’s supervised probation dismissed until Lyon missed a meeting with a probation officer and authorities raided his Arden-area home on Oct. 1, 2014.
There, they discovered computers, flash drives and videotapes that led to his 2018 conviction.
Lyon, who has paid out millions of dollars to settle civil suits filed against him over the videotaping, was fatalistic as he stood in a courthouse hallway in 2018 just before he was sentenced the last time.
“It is what it is,” he told The Bee.
This story was originally published April 2, 2020 at 10:12 AM.