California Real Estate Fraud Report

County prosecutors issued an arrest warrant last week for a man accused of bilking an 89-year-old Pacifica woman out of nearly $600,000.

Fetuu Tupoufutuna has fled the country in the face of allegations he conned an 89 year-old woman in Pacifica out of almot $600,000. Tupoufutunas has been charged with nine counts that include elder fraud by a caretaker, forgery and a great taking allegation, according to San Mateo County Deputy District Attorney Melissa McKowan.

The victim, Pauline Reade, was tricked into signing loan documents for $312,000 by Tupoufutuna, who met her while doing minor repair work on her home. The home, in which Mrs. Reade lived since 1951, was going to be foreclosed upon as a result. Reade was a widow who had no close contacts, which made her an attractive target by criminals. visually impaired.

Read the full article in the San Mateo Daily Journal.

An elderly man is the victim of elder financial fraud, according to authorities in Riverside, who say that Gary Lee Wickham embezzled more than $120,000 from the 90 year-old.  Wickham is accused of conning the victim by issuing him promissory notes that were never performed upon.

Four additional victims have reported to police that they were scammed by Wickham, and authorities are searching for more.

Read the full article in the Press Enterprise.

Accountant Maynard Weldon Moreland of Livermore has been accused of stealing more than $3 million from investors, many of them seniors. He has been charged with more than 30 felonies, including financial elder abuse and grand theft.

Read the full article on the Silcon Valley Mercury News.

Terry and Cheri Tucker, who operated Tucker Mortgage in Thousand Oaks and San Diego, are appealing their 10 year sentences, handed out by U.S. District Court Judge Manuel Real on November 30 of last year.

Both defendants pleaded guilty to bank fraud after soliciting private investors, mostly elderly, for money for real estate investments. That investment money was used to purchase up to $80 million in conventional loans. Those loans were used to convince sellers that the borrowers had down-payments, which they did not. The borrowers in fact were told by the Tuckers that they could purchase a home with no money down.

The Tuckers’ appeal does not affect an upcoming restitution hearing for the victims that is scheduled on February 22, according to Assistant U.S. District Attorney Mark Avei.

Read the Full Article in the Thousand Oaks Acorn.

Sonya Tucker, aka Cheri Tucker, and Terrance Tucker, aka Terry Tucker, are each going to federal prison for approximately 10 years.

The husband and wife team of mortgage brokers and real estate agents pleaded guilty to bank fraud after being prosecuted for processing fraudulent loan applications. They were originally charged with scamming real estate investors, many elderly, after promising them 12 percent rates of returns.

The Tuckers were prosecuted by Assistant U.S. District Attorney Mark Aveis, who said “There are plenty of federal prison beds for criminals like the Tuckers”.

Read the Full Article in the Thousand Oaks Acorn.

This is a news story, that if proven true in the courts, sets a new milestone in hubris and anti-social behavior by three licensed real estate professionals towards the public. When you read what has been alleged, perhaps you will wonder as I do how these individuals thought they could commit the alleged crimes without being detected.

Yesterday, California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown announced that he has arrested several employees of ALG, Inc., a Los Angeles-based mortgage company. Michael McConville, 39, Garrett Holdridge, 23, and Alan Ruiz, 28, are all being held on $2 million bail each. McConville is a sales manager for ALG, Inc., while Holdridge and Ruiz are loan officers for ALG. The three face a total of 44 charges for defrauding more than 70 borrowers.

Attorney General Brown’s office is alleging that McConville, Holdridge and Ruiz ran a loan modification scam by falsely promising distressed homeowners that they would help them refinance their loans with lower interest rates and other financial terms including - get this - even some cash out. It is alleged that McConville and his associates presented the homeowners with paperwork using the terms they had promised but which had never been approved by the lenders. After the borrowers signed the closing paperwork, the pages with the terms  were replaced with pages bearing the actual terms with which the lenders had agreed. The signatures of the victims were forged on the replacement documents by the defendants.

Said Attorney General Brown, “This was not some clerical error but a criminal conspiracy to steal nearly a million dollars from borrowers.”

The defendants have been charged with the following crimes:

1. 28 counts of grand theft (Penal Code Section 487, Subdivision (a))
2. 14 counts of forgery (Penal Code Section 470, Subdividion (d))
3. 1 count of elder abuse (Penal Code 182, Subdivision (d))
4. 1 count of conspiracy to commit grand theft (Penal Code Section 182, Subdivision (a)(1))
5. 3 special allegations of aggravated white-collar crime in excess of $500,000 (Penal Code Section 186.11,
Subdivision (a)(2))
6. Taking in excess of $3,200,000 (Penal Code Section 12022.6, Subdivision (a)(4) and (b)).

Read the Full Press Release by the Office of the California State Attorney General.

This article is also published on Examiner.com by the L.A. Fraud Examiner.

A Garden Grove housekeeper is being investigated by police in Orange County for possibly cleaning more than her elderly clients’ house.

Marlina Heinz was the housekeeper for Charles and Lois Woodbridge, an octogenarian couple living in Orange. Their attorney, Noelle M. Tomp, who practices elder, probate and trust law, has sued Heinz on behalf of their son John, alleging that she stole more than half of the Woodbridge’s assets. Charles Woodbridge has Parkinson’s Disease and his wife Lois has Alzheimer’s and dementia. It was because of his parents’ illnesses that John Woodbridge enlisted Dana’s Housekeeping in Garden Grove to find a housekeeper.

The lawsuit claims that 5 days before Lois’ death in 2006, Marlina Heinz took Charles to an attorney to have the Woodbridge’s estate plan amended so that Heinz would receive $200,000 and become the trustee of their estate. Later, Heinz’ name was added to the Woodbridge’s bank accounts and then - get this - she “married” Charles Woodbridge, despite already being married.

In addition to Heinz, John Woodbridge’s attorney has sued Dana’s Housekeeping and the two attorneys who altered the Woodbridge family trust.

Read the Full Article in the Orange County Register.

Many of the issues that are reported in the California Real Estate Fraud report - elder financial fraud, rental fraud, and the now tradition (sic) mortgage fraud, loan fraud and real estate fraud that became so common they qualified as business-as-usual during the subprime mania - were topics of discussion at a panel of real estate experts held in downtown Antioch last week.

Billed as the Contra Costa County Real Estate Fraud Summit, the summit included Terrence Christopher Patterson, of the state Department of Real Estate, an agent from the U.S. Secret Service who discussed identity theft resulting from loan applications being mined for personal data, and other local professionals.

Read the Full Article in the San Jose Mercury News.

Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Congressman Howard Coble (R-NC) have introduced the Senior Financial Empowerment Act of 2009 (H.R. 3040). The legislation, if passed, will help stop abusive mail, telemarketing and Internet fraud that targets senior citizens.

Congresswoman Baldwin says she became aware of the vulnerability of seniors to predators while helping her own grandmother.

Read the Full Article in TMC News.

An Orange County real estate broker, her former boyfriend and his brother are accused of using straw buyers to fraudulently purchase 35 properties, six of them in Kern County.

Kathy Chen, 48, a real estate broker in Westminster, Richard Salgado Gonzalez, 59, and his brother Daniel Gonzalez, 56, have been arrested and charged with 154 felony counts, among them conspiracy, grand theft, attempted grand theft, forgery, recording false documents, elder financial exploitation and identity theft, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s office. Chen, who owned Chen Financial, KC Realty and SBC Financial, and her co-conspirators are accused of using straw buyers to purchase 35 properties fraudulently.

Read the Full Article in the Bakersfield Californian.