Daniloo's ex-wife: I never suspected

Tony Daniloo kept her in the dark for years, his wife said, while swindling millions of dollars in one of Modesto's most notorious fraud schemes.

Nansi Masihi, who dropped her married name when her divorce from the convicted con man became final last week, mentally pummels herself for not seeing the signs of corruption that since have become so obvious to her.

She periodically shed tears Thursday in a lengthy interview, the first either has given since their high-profile arrests five days before Christmas 2004.

"I was stupid," she said. "My biggest mistake in life was trusting him."

Masihi, 32, worked as a mortgage loan officer in the middle of her husband's six-year bilking binge, although for another company. They shared a bank account. But she had no idea, she said, that the millions he later brought home, only a year after the third bankruptcy of their relationship, were tainted.

When Daniloo bought their spacious, $1 million Turlock home using the name of Masihi's younger sister, a college student, it made some sense because of their poor credit, Masihi said.

She didn't complain when Daniloo stocked the garage with five luxury vehicles, three of them worth more than $90,000 each. And Masihi was living large with the boat, Rolex and huge, flashy diamonds on her fingers and earlobes.

Meanwhile, her husband must have forged the signatures of both sets of their parents when he stole their Turlock homes, Masihi said.

Her first clue that something might be out of place, she said, came when her husband decided to name a pediatric wing after her in a $4.5 million pledge to Turlock's Emanuel Medical Center in October 2004. A month later, his $1 million pledge to California State University, Stanislaus, prompted another big newspaper headline.

Masihi continued to believe her husband's stories when The Bee detailed the couple's troubled past in December 2004. The articles stemmed mostly from Daniloo's East Bay deals years before and had little to do with DreamLife Financial, the mortgage company he had since established in Modesto, she noted.

She had no inkling, she said, that he had swiped $6.7 million in less than a year.

Handcuffs, snapped on her wrists eight days after The Bee's exposé, helped awaken her. She quickly posted bail and, with her toddler, moved into her parents' Turlock home, where they still live, she said.

A court document from early 2006 suggests that she worked a deal with prosecutors to repay victims $368,000 to escape four felony counts. But all charges were dismissed and she owes nothing, according to records dated shortly before her husband pleaded guilty a few months afterward.

She refused to answer questions about her case. Neither would she discuss the trio of bankruptcies, except to blame them on Daniloo, including one she filed a year before they wed.

And she would not consent to be photographed, despite a vast change in appearance since her December 2004 booking mug published several times over the years. Their 5-year-old son, she said, would recognize her current hairdo, a jet black version of the A-line bob sported by Posh Spice, also known as Victoria Beckham.

Masihi won't name her Turlock employer, other than to say it's not a mortgage business.

But she patiently answered plenty of other questions for more than 90 minutes, at times dabbing her eyes, sometimes with a shaking voice, always protesting her innocence and affirming the guilt of the man she once loved and now is leaving behind.

"Looking back now, it seems (the case) changed my perception of what the good times were about," Masihi said. "At the time, they seemed perfect. Now when I look back, there is not a memory of him that's not attached (to) a bad mem- ory."

Bee staff writer Garth Stapley can be reached at gstapley@modbee.com or 578-2390.