Ventura : Paralegal Is Arrested in Fraud Case

A 47-year-old Montecito man who ran a Ventura legal aid clinic has been arrested on suspicion of encouraging his clients to defraud their landlords and perjure themselves in court, the Ventura County district attorney’s office said Thursday.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kim George Gibbons said Richard French, a paralegal who operated Assisted Legal Services, sometimes gave legal advice to tenants on the verge of eviction, who would pay him $60 for the service.

Gibbons said French told his clients they could stave off eviction by taking advantage of part of the housing law that requires landlords to notify all co-tenants before evicting them. French advised some clients to file forms claiming that roommates or people subletting the property had not been served with notice of eviction, which would effectively block the eviction proceedings, Gibbons said.

In one case last summer, French allegedly told a woman that she could postpone eviction by forging the name of a former roommate onto a claim to right of possession form and filing it in Municipal Court.

However, the woman told the judge what she had done, Gibbons said. The district attorney’s office sent investigators to French’s business posing as tenants who were about to be evicted. Gibbons said French advised investigators in April and July to forge the names of nonexistent roommates on the claim forms and file them with the court.

French could not be reached Thursday for comment.

He was arrested Wednesday and released on $5,000 bail after being charged with three counts each of solicitation of fraud and perjury, subornation of perjury and preparation of false documentary evidence, Gibbons said. Investigators also arrested French’s office clerk, Dana Williams, 24, of Santa Barbara, on one count of each charge in one of the cases.

If convicted, French faces a maximum penalty of six years and a fine of $10,000. Williams faces a maximum penalty of two years in jail and a fine of $10,000. They are scheduled to be arraigned Sept. 26 in Municipal Court.