Milton Retana, 46, Huntington Park, California, who preyed on Spanish-speaking investors with promises of hefty returns in the real estate bubble has been found guilty of federal charges for bilking more than 2,000 victims out of more than $62 million. Retana was convicted of six counts of mail fraud and one count of making false statements to government agents who were
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Wayne Puff, 61, Old Bridge, New Jersey, the ringleader of a massive Ponzi scheme which defrauded hundreds of investors and mortgage lenders of more than $100 million through a purported real estate investment business, was sentenced to 216 months in federal prison and ordered to pay approximately $101.1 million in restitution and to serve 3 years of supervised
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The USMAC Law Group is prohibited from doing loan modifications in Oregon and must pay $28,857 under a settlement with the Oregon Department of Justice. The settlement will provide refunds to some Oregon homeowners and prohibit a California law firm from doing further loan modification work in Oregon.
The Oregon
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Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz, joined by U.S. Senator Harry Reid, Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, and Assistant Attorney General Tony West of the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, announced Operation Stolen Hope as part of a continuing federal-state crackdown on mortgage foreclosure rescue and loan modification scams. The operation involves 118 actions by 26 federal and state agencies.
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Martin Quoc Pham, 28, Garden Grove, California, has been sentenced to 132 months in federal prison for orchestrating two identity theft schemes in which he obtained personal information from hundreds of consumers and used the data in an attempt to fraudulently obtain approximately $1.5 million from home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) and credit cards accounts. Pham was sentenced
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Visanio Eugene Vann, 47, Thousand Oaks, California, was sentenced by United States District Judge S. James Otero in Los Angeles to 95 months in federal prison for orchestrating an identity theft scheme in which he used personal identifying information taken from dozens of mortgage and credit files to fraudulently obtain credit cards that were used to purchase more than $1 million in goods and services. In addition to the nearly
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