California Real Estate Fraud Report

The Federal Trade Commission is trying to show consumers there’s no such thing as a free ride. If something is too good to be true, it almost always is.

The FTC’s Division of Consumer and Business Education recently set up a web site called Esteemed Lending Services, a fictitious lending company, that trumpets to borrowers that “We guarantee a loan to fit every situation.” In just 60 days, Esteemed Lending Services received 3,500 hits on its website. Apparently, there are still a lot of consumers who think that there are financial services companies that can bail them out from deep debt.

Read the full article in the Los Angeles Times, written by Lew Sichelman.

Randall Guerra heads a non-profit group funded by the government to help distressed homeowners in the Fresno area. He said 8 to 10 homeowners are walking in to his office each walk for help after being ripped off either by foreclosure consultants, loan modification firms or the banks.

Loan modification firms charged upfront fees (now illegal) to borrowers for assistance in negotiating loan modifications. Either the company did nothing for the borrower or took his or her money knowing that the borrower could not qualify for a loan modification.

Sydney Ricks, an attorney who heads the Real Estate Fraud Division of the Fresno County District Attorney’s Office says “There’s a lot of desperation out there and the scam artists are targeting those people knowing there is a lot of anxiety.” Yet, while there is a backload of cases to process, the unit has only one attorney and one investigator.

Read the full article on ABC.

In a press release issued today, California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown announced that 9 men have been charged with operating a boiler room foreclosure fraud operation. The scam is reported to have fleeced some 1,500 homeowners out of more than $2.3 million by promising the desperate victims they would receive loan work-outs and modifications.

Four of the the men are already in custody: Gregg Scott Quinn, 37, of Camarillo, the ring’s sales manager; Juan Pierre Washington, 40, of Winnetka, a supervisor; Gary Arnold Eisenberg, 71, of Westwood, a top-performing telemarketer with the company; and Ira Itskowitz, 58, a sales manager. Eisenberg and Itskowitz have distinguished themselves by each having spent more than five years in federal prison for their previous fraud convictions.

Still missing are the four principal owners of the business: Niv Iskin, 30, of Reseda; Reviv Karpman, 38, of Tarzana; Tomer Kogman, 29, of Reseda; and Avraham Yechizkia, 34, of Encino; as well as a sales manager, Barel Iskin, 23, of Woodland Hills.

AG Brown’s office responsed to numerous consumer complaints against the defendants’ and their Canoga Park businesses at 8236 Remmet Avenue, Mason Capital Group, LLC and Gretchen Fox and Associates. Agents found a Las Vegas-style sales floor with casino-themed decor such as craps, poker and black jack tables fashioned into computer workstations. Top producing telemarketers received bonuses by spinning a roulette wheel.

As with all loan modification scams, this one preyed upon borrowers desperate to save their homes, who were enticed into relying upon false statements by the telemarketers that they had a “highly successful loan negotiation staff with over 20 years experience”, as well as paying upfront fees, a practice that is illegal unless performed by an attorney. Although Mason Capital Group and Gretchen Fox and Associates promised a guaranteed refund, in practice they refused almost all requests by dissatisfied clients to receive their money back.

The defendants have been charged with 97 criminal counts that include collecting advance fees for foreclosure consultant services, making false and misleading statements to induce homeowners to pay in excess of $400 for loan modification services, failure to remit business income tax returns, remitting false personal income tax returns and committing two or more felonies with White-Collar Crime Enhancement and Excessive Taking Enhancement.

Read the California Attorney General’s press release and the Declaration in Support of Arrest Warrants.

Three people have been charged in an 83 count indictment by a Santa Clara County grand jury for loan modification fraud.  The crimes that are alleged include enticing homeowners in foreclosure by promising them principal reduction that involved selling the homeowners’ loans to investors (or straw buyers) and then reselling the home at a lower price back to the original homeowners.

Prosecutors allege that San Jose residents Rene Alvarez and Mariano Ortega, and Cydney Sanchez of Los Angeles, were part of a seven state scam that involved 400 homeowners and the theft of more than $2 million.

The district attorney’s office states that Alvarez and Ortega owned and operated M&R Contemporary Solutions Inc., a Campbell-based “foreclosure consulting” company from 2008 to 2009. Sanchez was the owner/operator of West Coast Mortgage and Horizon Property Holdings in Beverly Hills.

The only good news in this story is that M&R’s bank accounts were frozen so that the victims could receive restitution if the defendants are found to be guilty.

Read the full article in the San Jose Business Journal.

Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. announced that two women who operated a phony foreclosure relief firm have each been sentenced to one year in jail and ordered to repay the homeowners they ripped by charging them upfront fees for foreclosure relief services that were never supplied.

The two, Marianne Curtis, 69, of Costa Mesa and Mary Alice Yraceburu, 46, of Riverdale, ran Fresno and Orange County-based Foreclosure Freedom and pleaded guilty last month to 71 criminal counts, including grand theft, conspiracy and unlawful foreclosure consulting.

Says AG Brown: “Curtis and Yraceburu shamelessly exploited homeowners desperate to avoid foreclosure, charging up to $1,800 in up-front fees for loan modifications that were never delivered.” “Today’s jail sentences send a warning shot to loan-modification consultants: If you swindle homeowners, you face serious time behind bars.”

Curtis and Yraceburu must also repay 36 victims a total of $32,040 and they are forbidden from working in the telemarketing and real estate industries.

Non-profit housing counselors certified by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development provide free help to homeowners. To find a counselor in your area, call 1-800-569-4287.

If you are a homeowner who has been scammed, contact Brown’s office at 1-800-952-5225 or file a complaint online at: www.ag.ca.gov/consumers/general.php.

Read the Attorney General’s press release here.

Mary Alice Yraceburu, 46, of Riverdale and Marianne Curtis, 68, of Costa Mesa have just pleaded guilty to 71 counts of illegally taking upfront fees for loan modification services that they never provided and related crimes. The two were investigated by the California Attorney General’s Office and prosecuted in Orange County Superior Court.

Neither woman possessed real estate licenses, legal expertise or experience in the mortgage industry but they were already convicted felons whose latest business enterprise was called Foreclosure Freedom.

Read the full article in the Orange County Register, aka OC Register.

The United Law Group’s offices in Irvine were the subject of a raid last week, as agents from the U.S. Postal Inspection, the FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, the Irvine Police Department and the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program conducted a joint search of the law firm’s office in connection with a possible loan modification fraud scam.

According to the affidavit for the search warrant, Interviews with homeowners and former employees revealed that United Law Group charged upfront retainers ranging from $1,500 to $12,000 (!!!), yet investigators were unaware of any loan modifications that had actually been completed, save for the examples used in the firm’s advertising.

The California State Bar is also looking into at least one of the firm’s attorneys, Sean Rutledge, and have filed disciplinary charges against him for taking money from a homeowner but not making any effort to obtain a loan modification on the homeowner’s behalf.

Read the full article on the Orange County Register, aka OC Register.

Attorneys with the Asian Pacific American Legal Center are accusing a Los Angeles law firm of defrauding several dozen Korean immigrants by promising to help them save their homes from foreclosure.

The Center has filed a lawsuit against Trinity Law Associates, Inc. and attorney Timothy D. Thurman. The complaint alleges that Thurman used Korean-speaking real estate agents to find homeowners in distress, after which Thurman and his associates charged retainers in the $7,000 range for services that were not rendered, according to the legal complaint. The Center’s attorney, Yungsuhn Park, said that most of the victims did not speak well and counted on the assistance of Trinity Law Associates to help them save their homes.

Read the full article in the Los Angeles Times.

This is the story of an attorney who is about to lose his right to practice law.

The California Bar Journal reported that Christopher Lee Diener (#187890) is being charged by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office with one count of conspiracy to commit grand theft, 116 counts of grand theft by false pretenses and one count of perjury. Prosecutors allege that Diener, Stefano Joseph Marrero and Terrence Green Sr. set up a loan modification business using the names Home Relief Services, LLC; US Loan Mod Processing, HRS Communications, the Diener Law Firm and Diener Law Group. Marrero and Green were the managing partners and Christopher Diener was the attorney.

Marrero and Green promised borrowers in default that they could facilitate loan modifications in 90 days if the borrowers made advance payments (illegal in California) to Diener. California Attorney General Jerry Brown has filed a claim for civil penalties against all three men, who have also received a desist and refrain order from the California Department of Real Estate to forbid them from soliciting new clients.

Read the full article in the California Bar Journal.