In more optimistic times, developer Bernardo Katz's slogan for Beechview was "a neighborhood of excellence."

Those days are long gone. And so is Mr. Katz.

His "excellence" catch phrase, one he peddled to Pittsburgh's Urban Redevelopment Authority while borrowing more than $700,000 he has not repaid, seems a mockery when juxtaposed with Beechview's shuttered storefronts.

After buying much of the property in the neighborhood's business district, Mr. Katz stopped paying his multimillion-dollar debts. He left behind mortgage defaults, foreclosures, empty promises -- and a federal investigation.

"He did a lot of damage. We lost businesses," said Don Bell, president of the Beechview Merchants Association. "Katz did nothing to improve the lot of Beechview."

People who did business with Mr. Katz in other parts of Allegheny County also lashed out at him for what they see as unscrupulous behavior.

"I have been trying to forget about him for a long, long time," said former business partner Angel Mistro, 72, of Mt. Lebanon. "I should have known better."

Mr. Katz's critics wonder if a reckoning finally might be at hand. Federal charges were filed last week against at least two of Mr. Katz's business associates alleging a mortgage fraud scheme.

Mr. Katz, 49, has not been charged, and federal investigators, who have been scrutinizing his dealings for more than a year, will not say whether he is a target.

But the indictment of mortgage broker Michael Dokmanovich, 35, of Bethel Park, refers to someone with the initials "BK."

Mr. Dokmanovich was the broker in a number of deals done by Mr. Katz, and people familiar with the case believe "BK" is indeed Mr. Katz.

In December 2007, Mr. Katz returned to his native Brazil, 5,000 miles from the reach of lenders.

Mr. Katz might also be beyond the grasp of law enforcement. Although the United States and Brazil have an extradition treaty, it does not cover Brazilian citizens or, as pertains to Mr. Katz, dual citizens.

With credit easy before the sub-prime mortgage crisis, financial institutions lent freely to Mr. Katz. Now they appear to be paying the price.

Mr. Katz is the defendant in dozens of lawsuits for defaulting on mortgages, not paying credit cards, being delinquent on property taxes and failing to pay state income tax. At least 10 of his Beechview properties have been sold at sheriff's sale.

Lawyers communicate with him via e-mail because they can't reach him any other way. A former attorney and his onetime property manager have sued him.

"The chances of getting it back, in my opinion, are slim to none," state Sen. Wayne Fontana, a Beechview native, said of Mr. Katz's debt to the URA. Those funds -- all taxpayer money -- were supposed to be used for financing mortgages and beautifying facades in Beechview.

By the time Mr. Katz left the country, the U.S. Secret Service, which investigates bank fraud and is part of the Western Pennsylvania Mortgage Fraud Task Force, had been looking into his dealings for several months.

Pittsburgh Controller Michael Lamb, who began an audit last year of Mr. Katz's URA dealings, said one investigative focus appears to be whether he illegally took out multiple mortgages at the same time on a single piece of property.

Court filings against Mr. Dokmanovich and Daniel Smithbower, 35, of Murrysville, who bought properties from Mr. Katz, allege that the conspiracy in which they are charged involved inflated property appraisals, overstated sales prices, fraudulent loan applications, bogus W-2 statements from borrowers and fake financial statements.

Mr. Dokmanovich's indictment said "BK deposited funds into the purchasers' accounts to make it falsely appear to the lenders that the purchasers had sufficient assets to purchase the properties."

Prosecutors subpoenaed Katz documents from the URA in 2007 and last year and interviewed one employee there last summer.

A federal investigator contacted at least one private bank attorney concerning Mr. Katz's whereabouts. And one Pittsburgh resident said Secret Service agents inquired about his dealings with Mr. Katz.

That person, Phillip Injeian, said the agents also asked about the circumstances under which Mr. Katz took three of his four children to Rio de Janeiro and away from his wife, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra violinist Holly Katz. She has since relocated there.

Mrs. Katz filed for divorce in February 2007. The court record is sealed, and Max C. Feldman, Mr. Katz's lawyer for domestic matters, said the case remains pending. Another attorney, who once represented Mr. Katz, said the couple has reconciled.

Mr. Katz would not comment for this story. And Mr. Feldman -- who has never met Mr. Katz but communicates with him by Skype, an Internet telephone service -- would not address questions about why his client left the country. However, he said Mr. Katz hopes to erase his debts.

"I think he has good intentions. Bernardo's not one to just talk. I mean he's a good communicator, but he means what he says," Mr. Feldman said. "He has every intention to."

Mr. Katz speaks several languages and is a top-notch chess player and an accomplished cellist. He met his wife in Phoenix in 1989; they married a year later and moved to Pittsburgh in 1991, when she earned a spot in the symphony.

Starting in the early 1990s, Mr. Katz began snapping up residential real estate in the South Hills, Shadyside, Oakland and Downtown. More than 100 properties have passed through his hands.

In most deals, the Katzes co-signed the loans with a variety of banks. Mr. Katz ultimately obtained more than $56 million in mortgages, according to an analysis by state Rep. Chelsa Wagner, D-Beechview.

In the late 1990s, Mr. Katz met Mr. Mistro, a professor at what was then Robert Morris College. Mr. Mistro, a native of Argentina, dabbled in multi-unit rental properties. They went into business together as Phoenix Properties.

"For two years, three years it worked fine. He was good," Mr. Mistro said. "And then I don't know what happened with him. He just went off the deep end. I don't know why he started taking advantage of everybody."

Mr. Mistro claimed Mr. Katz was not putting in his half for property taxes on their properties. And he said he would get angry calls from people -- painters, carpenters, maintenance men -- who said Mr. Katz had not paid them for work.

About three years ago the partnership dissolved, Mr. Mistro said.

"By that time I was a little suspicious, quite suspicious, of what he was doing. When you have calls from people saying, 'When am I gonna get paid? When am I gonna get paid?' You get suspicious of your partner," Mr. Mistro said. "Every time, I had to beg Bernardo to give his half of the money."

Several years after meeting Mr. Mistro, Mr. Katz began doing business with Mr. Injeian, a violin maker. He knew the Katzes through mutual friends and moved to Pittsburgh from New York City in 2001. He fell into business selling instruments with Mr. Katz.

Those dealings eventually progressed to real estate. Mr. Katz already had some success in the business district of Mt. Lebanon, where he lived. Now he was setting his sights on Beechview.

"He was marketing it as if he was building a Shadyside in Beechview," Ms. Wagner said.

Mr. Injeian said he eventually bought about 10 rental properties from Mr. Katz. Four have been foreclosed on, and three of those were sold at sheriff's sale.

Mr. Injeian, 53, who cast himself as a patsy taken advantage of by a mercenary Mr. Katz, said he overpaid for the properties because he believed Beechview to be a community on the move.

"He tapped into my vulnerability of seeing how [property values] had been shooting up in New York, Boston and other places," Mr. Injeian said recently from his Downtown shop on Penn Avenue. "We were looking at, I thought, undervalued houses ... . He made it all look rosy. My mistake was I didn't do enough of my homework."

Mr. Katz also made pitches to politicians and asked for taxpayer help. Former state Rep. Michael Diven of Brookline helped him make contact with the mayor's office and the URA.

"He seemed like his heart was in the right place. He was a little high-maintenance, but he was the only one willing to invest any significant money in Beechview," Mr. Diven said.

That characterization sums up many people's experiences with the alternately brash and charming Mr. Katz. Allies and enemies alike saw him as an arrogant, difficult character who often rubbed people the wrong way but who had a big-picture vision.

With light-rail transit running through the heart of the business district, ferrying commuters between the South Hills and Downtown, Beechview seemed to be the perfect place for a restaurant-driven revitalization.

Mr. Katz assembled numerous properties on his own. But he ran into a stumbling block: two taverns pegged as "nuisance bars" because of violent incidents and open drug dealing.

Banks were not willing to loan money to buy the taverns. Talked up by Mr. Diven, Mr. Katz got meetings with top brass in the city, including then-Mayor Tom Murphy.

The URA endorsed Mr. Katz's $3.3 million project to gussy up facades, rid the area of trouble spots, secure a senior-citizen center in a building he owned and usher in eclectic businesses.

After checking Mr. Katz's credit and real estate holdings and verifying tenant interest, the agency in 2004 and 2005 loaned Mr. Katz more than $700,000 so he could buy four properties -- including those housing the taverns -- and fix up numerous others.

"His storefronts looked great. The buildings themselves were maintained properly. They were occupied. The businesses were vibrant and functioning," said Robert Rubinstein, the URA's director of economic development.

"We had a stack of letters of intent and draft leases ... . These were pretty solid expressions of intent. In fact, some of them had signed leases."

The bars on Broadway Avenue eventually closed. But the heralded redevelopment never followed.

Many prospective retailers decided not to move into Mr. Katz's properties. The URA described Mr. Katz as difficult to work with, leading to soured relationships with potential tenants.

Despite Mr. Rubinstein's assertions that the URA did its homework, the agency missed some things in the Katz vetting process. Mr. Rubinstein said the URA was unaware that Mr. Katz had developed a reputation in some quarters as a slumlord.

"The first problem was Katz had a bad track record. I was pretty sure he was someone we probably shouldn't have been dealing with. The unfortunate thing was the residents up there were tired of the blight and were willing to give anybody a shot," City Councilman James Motznik said.

The URA also did not recognize early on that Mr. Katz worked without a large support staff of brokers, accountants, lawyers and contractors.

"It became clear to us that this essentially was a one-man show who had a big vision but couldn't carry through with the details," Mr. Rubinstein said.

Squirrel Hill architect Alan Dunn, hired by Mr. Katz to draft the Beechview senior center plan, disagreed with the URA's assessment of Mr. Katz and said not many small developers operate contracting companies.

Although he said Mr. Katz owes him money, Mr. Dunn nevertheless praised him as "altruistic" and a "maverick."

"I don't think the project was that colossal that it was beyond his means of operating," Mr. Dunn said. "If anything I would give him more credit for the vision than I would condemn him for his resources."

All Mr. Katz's vision could not save him from what Mr. Dunn and others see as a pivotal struggle over who controlled development of the proposed senior center. The project stalled in 2006, blamed by different factions on either Mr. Katz's failings or his political enemies.

Things went downhill quickly.

"He felt he was promised things and the community turned against him and his supporters turned against him," Mr. Rubinstein said. "He turned vindictive for a while."

A wave of foreclosures by S&T Bank began in 2007. But the URA held off suing until last February, fearful that Mr. Katz would make good on threats to rent to check-cashing stores and allow his buildings to fall into further disrepair, according to Mr. Rubinstein.

Ms. Wagner said one impetus for launching her political campaign to take over Mr. Diven's legislative seat was trying to fix the damage Mr. Katz did to Beechview.

Soon after her election, she hired a staffer to work with the Beechview Merchants Association and assemble detailed information about Mr. Katz's real estate holdings.

That report, which was given to federal authorities, outlined Mr. Katz's dealings with Mr. Dokmanovich, Mr. Smithbower and numerous others.

"I think it's very good," Ms. Wagner said this week of the criminal charges. "The one question that I'd love to find out is if Katz is one who may follow."