California Real Estate Fraud Report

Real estate agent Robert Carrillo’s crime spree is coming to a close, as he was convicted last week of five felony counts including grand theft, forgery, and impersonation of a notary public.

According to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, Carrillo, 50, and his partner Cesar Emilio Luna (still at-large) operated their real estate crimes in Santa Clara, San Mateo and Alameda counties. In one of the cases, Carrillo and Luna forged the victim’s signature on a notary’s journal but used their own fingerprints.

Read the full article in KTVU.com

A closely-watched case in Westminster in which a real estate broker was accused of stealing $17.5 million ended when Kathy Chen, 49, was convicted of multiple counts of real estate fraud. Chen was charged with using stolen identities in order to purchase properties, which she then defaulted on so that she could steal the loan money (and she thought this was go undetected?). She now awaits a July 9 sentencing by Superior Court Judge Lance Jensen and a possible 111 years in prison.

Chen was the owner of Chen Financial, KC Realty and SBC Financial. She was prosecuted by William Overtoom of the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and convicted of 136 felony counts for obtaining 47 fraudulent loans totaling more than $17.5 million.

Among Kathy Chen’s victims was a 92-year-old woman, whose identity was stolen. Chen and her co-defendants (all fugitives, including her boyfriend) were accused of falsifying loan applications by inflating the incomes of the purported buyers, forging names and signatures on deeds and loan documents and forging the seal and notary stamp on a variety of notarized documents and deeds.

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

A mother-daughter team is sitting in Kern County jail after being unable to post bail of $1 million each.

Dawn Marie Kantin, 37, and her 69 year-old mother Alice Kantin, have been charged with dozens of counts of conspiracy, embezzlement, theft, notary fraud and forgery. The charges arise from a real estate fraud scheme in which at least 32 people were cheated out of $2.3 million from 18 homes that went into foreclosure.

Alice Kantin is the owner of Desert Air Real Estate Investments, Inc. in Bakersfield, a company that is not registered with the California Secretary of State.

The Kantins purportedly contracted with homeowners in default to take over their mortgage payments; instead all the homes were lost to foreclosure. In addition, 14 tenants with options to purchase the homes also lost their investments due to the foreclosures.

While mother Alice allegedly put the deeds of the distressed homeowners in her name or that of Desert Air Real Estate Investments while she searched for a renter to purchase the home, daughter Dawn Kantin allegedly busied herself with committing notary fraud. Dawn Kantin is not only not a licensed notary public in California; her application to become one was denied the California Secretary of State’s office because of “substantial and material misstatement or omission in the application” according to by Gordon Isen, Deputy District Attorney of the Kern County District Attorney’s Real Estate Fraud Unit.

Read the full article in the Bakersfield Californian.

Two San Diego men have been indicted by federal prosecutors have indicted for loan modification fraud.

Glenn Rosofsky and Michael Trap not only set up their business, Nations Housing Modification Center, to deceive distressed homeowners into thinking they were located near the White House, but they brazenly sent out their solicitation letters using the seal of the U.S. Congress. Trap has already pleaded guilty to conspiracy and money laundering.

Read the full article on ABC News.

In a plot that has been repeated many times in the California Real Estate Fraud Report, a gang member pled guilty in federal court to operating a mortgage fraud ring that included at least 24 people. It entailed straw buyers, phony appraisals, fraudulent applications for mortgages and falsified escrow documents as well as the services of a real estate broker, Stanley Gentry, who allegedly sold access to the MLS for $10,000 / month. Estimates of the losses for the over 100 properties in San Diego County range between $20 million and $50 million.

Darnell Bell pled guilty to participating in a racketeering conspiracy involving bank fraud, money laundering and other crimes, for which he faces up to 20 years in prison. His co-conspirator, Michael Ivy, owned the Real Estate Center in La Mesa. Ivy pled guilty earlier to conspiracy and is awaiting his sentence.

Read the full story in the San Diego Union Tribune.

Why would a real estate professional risk their license and their freedom to make literally, a few dollars?

Apparently that’s what Christi Fry, aka Christi Martin, might have done. Fry, of West Covina, was arrested at Seller’s Choice Escrow earlier this week and charged by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, just one day short of the statute of limitations expiring, according to investigator Martin Landrum. She and her alleged co-conspirator, Omar Paz, of Rancho Cucamonga, are being held in lieu of $450,000 and $850,000 bonds respectively.

The events leading to the arrests began when Omar Paz and his wife divorced. Paz sold his home and Fry handled both the escrow and notary duties for the sale. Paz later transferred most of the money from the joint account he held with his wife that were the profits from the sale into an account he alone held. The fraud was discovered during the divorce proceedings, when Paz’ ex-wife noticed that her name had been forged on disclosure forms, escrow instructions and the grant deed to the new buyers.

Notarizing a document as containing an original signature requires the presence of the signer and positive identification. Probably because she overlooked that not-so-minor detail, Fry’s notary license was  revoked after a separate investigation by the California Secretary of State’s Office.

Read the Full Article in the San Bernardino Sun by Frank C. Girardot.