September 3rd, 2010 at 9:26am
California’s three-strikes law is in for a test: it was not designed for white-collar crimes, but is going to be test on a man who is accused of scamming most elderly South Los Angeles residents out of their houses.
47 year-old Timothy Barnett is charged with 23 felonies, including identity theft, real estate fraud and theft from the elderly. His previous convictions/strikes were for two burglaries in 1997.
Max Huntsman, the attorney who supervises the L.A. County District Attorney’s real estate fraud division said about Barnett: “He has an almost magical ability to install confidence in people. He is a great menace to the community.”
Read the full article in the Associated Press.
September 3rd, 2010 at 9:08am
After pleading guilty to 112 felony counts, 68 year old Joseph Anthony Veltre was sentenced to 18 years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme that fleeced investors, many of them elderly, out of $2.6 million. He was ordered to repay that same sum in restitution.
Veltre ran his Ponzi scheme out of Sea View Financial and Allied Corporate Investments. He made hard money loans to borrowers wanting to take out second and third mortgages and promised high rates of return to his investors.
Read the full article in the OC Register.
August 13th, 2010 at 9:35am
The San Joaquin County D.A.’s Office has completed a three year investigation into a Tracy, California brokerage, resulting in the arrests of the firm’s chief executive and a second person.
Ward Real Estate Brokerage & Foreclosure Services Inc., no longer in business, was the focus of multiple complaints. Authorities believe $4.5 million was stolen from investors through a house-flipping scheme that promised high returns but failed when the real estate market turned sour.
Leesa Marie Ward, 45, of Lodi, was arraigned on a 46-count felony indictment by a criminal grand jury, which charged her with tax evasion, grand theft and securities fraud. Alison Ann Jensen, 45, of Pleasanton turned herself in and was booked on identical charges. Bail for each licensed real estate broker is set at $3 million. Jensen’s broker’s license has expired, but Ward’s is still active with the California DRE.
Some of the victim’s of this alleged investment scam were elderly.
Read the full article in RecordNet.com
August 6th, 2010 at 7:11am
John Tran, 37, a former bank manager at a Wells Fargo branch in San Jose, has entered guilty pleas to theft from an elder, fraud and forgery. Tran targeted elderly clients of the bank and stole from them by visiting them at their homes in order to convince them to make investments that were never made and cashing their checks.
In addition to his prison sentence, expected to be six years, Tran must pay $553,000 in restitution to Wells Fargo, which reimbursed to the elderly customers he victimized.
Read the full article in SF Gate, the San Francisco Chronicle.
There is an earlier article about John Tran in this blog.
July 7th, 2010 at 9:07am
Newly elected Santa Barbara County District Attorney Joyce Dudley has put one of her deputies, attorney Gordon Auchincloss, in charge of targeting real estate fraud and related crimes.
The Pacific Coast Business Times stated that it had questioned candidates for the Santa Barbara D.A. position during the recent election as to what they intended to do about mortgage fraud, elder financial abuse and other white-collar crimes, crimes that usually take a back seat to prosecutions of street criminals.
Read the full article in the Pacific Coast Business Times .
May 19th, 2010 at 11:06am
A former branch manager at Bank of America in Willow Glen, California, has pleaded no contest to elder fraud and grand theft. He could receive up to four years and eight months in prison for stealing $18,000 from elderly clients of the bank and unbeknownst to them, issue ATM cards.
Santa Clara County prosecutors say that Maurizio Contarino, 47, is a member of a new club of criminals that consists of bank employees that rip off their customers. Another banker, ex-Wells Fargo employee John Tran, was arrested several month ago and is accused of also stealing from elderly customers (see the March 25 article in the California Real Estate Fraud Report entitled Former Wells Fargo manager accused in elder financial fraud).
Contarino’s crimes entailed accessing the accounts of Bank of America’s elderly customers, ordering the ATM cards, and changing their addresses to that of his branch. He would then use the debit cards to steal money from their bank accounts.
[Note: I worked for Carte Blanche Corporation in the mid-1970s. A small group of employees there committed similar crimes: they issued extra credit cards in the customers' names, changed the addresses so that the employees would receive the cards, then changed the address back to the customers' addresses, all in the same billing cycle. By the time the customers called to complain about the charges, their accounts had been charged up. I don't believe those employees were ever prosecuted, even though management had a good idea which employees were committing the fraud.]
Read the full article in the Silicon Valley Mercury News.
May 13th, 2010 at 9:44pm
Livermore accountant Maynard Weldon Moreland has pleaded no contest to operating a $3 million Ponzi scheme. Moreland pleaded no contents to 21 counts of grand theft, 12 charges of elder financial abuse and one felony count of engaging in a pattern of theft conduct.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Kevin Murphy heard the case and is waiting for a report on what happened to the money Moreland stole, which he promised his 20 clients/victims would be invested in real estate.
Read the full article in the Silicon Valley Mercury News.
May 13th, 2010 at 9:23pm
Roderic Tokubo , already the object of a court order forbidding him from operating “equity share agreements”, was found in contempt for violating that court order. Judge Kay Kingsley further ordered Tokubo to pay $173,000 in restitution to an Margaret Irvin, an elderly woman in Salinas who lost her home as a result of the fraud he committed.
Tokubo operated IEI Inc., and under that aegis refinanced Ms. Irvin’s home. Not only did he did not file the new grant deed in her name, he took out the loan under his own name and did not disclose that he did not live at the home. Ms. Irvin is disabled and lives on a fixed income.
Read the full article in the Monterey County Herald.
May 6th, 2010 at 1:02pm
Bad news for those who try to help seniors who have been ripped off or who want to help prevent elder financial fraud:
The John F. Kennedy University Elder Law Clinic, which logged more than 1,536 phone calls last year, is in danger of being closed after this June due to lack of funds and insufficient law students volunteering to assist seniors.
Read the full article in the San Jose Mercury News.
April 23rd, 2010 at 9:08am
A San Leandro woman is looking at four years in prison after pleading guilty to defrauding an elderly, disabled woman in San Jose. If it were not for a concerned neighbor of the victim who contacted the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s real estate and elder-dependent adult fraud unit, this criminal would have gotten away with her crimes.
Diana Marks, 45, conned the victim into gift-deeding her property to Marks. The property had been paid off except for $26,000 in liends and was worth approximately $300,000. After gaining title, Marks refinanced the home, spent the money on herself and her family and let the property go into foreclosure.
The victim lost all of her money. Whether she gets the restitution from Marks as ordered, remains to be seen.
Read the full article in the Silicon Valley Mercury News.
