Martha Rodriguez, 38, Downey, California, orchestrated a real estate fraud scheme that caused nearly $13 million in losses after falsely promising to help homeowners in default on their mortgages has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. Rodriguez who pleaded guilty to mail fraud and
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Jon Weldon James, 33, Long Beach, California, who operated a number of ventures that he used to solicit money with false claims of profitable investments in real estate has pleaded guilty to a federal wire fraud charge. James pleaded guilty to the federal offense related to his Ponzi scheme that collected more than $33 million from his El
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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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Felix Pichardo, 27, Lancaster, California was sentenced to eight years in federal prison and ordered to pay restitution of $777,000 in relation to a mortgage fraud scheme in which he “purchased” homes in Altadena and Riverside, California. Pichardo pleaded
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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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The State Bar of California has taken action against 5 more lawyers under investigation for loan modification misconduct, bringing to 14 the number of attorneys who have resigned or been placed on involuntary inactive enrollment since creation of the bar’s Loan Modification Task Force in April 2009.
Timothy Thurman [Bar #216048], 37, Altadena, California, resigned on November 2, 2009, with charges pending following
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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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14 Bay Area residents have been indicted and charged with conspiracy to manufacture at least 1000 marijuana plants and manufacturing at least 1000 marijuana plants arising out of a wide-scale, sophisticated indoor marijuana cultivation operation in the Central Valley, California. The federal grand jury also returned a separate indictment charging five Bay Area residents with 26 counts of mail fraud in
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Myra Holmes, 52, Vallejo, California, was indicted by a federal grand jury with concealment of assets and bank fraud.
The indictment, which was issued on Sept. 23, 2009, remained under seal until yesterday morning when Holmes was arrested in Vallejo. Holmes made her initial appearance in federal court in San
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