Couple Say They Were Bilked in Realty Deal : Courts: Lawsuit is third in five years filed against Simi Valley agent Manuel Lechuga, who denies any wrongdoing. ‘These are lying people,’ he says of the plaintiffs.

Realty agent Manuel Lechuga lives in a four-bedroom, Tudor-style house with a pool that overlooks western Simi Valley from an upper-class neighborhood.

He is well-established in the Simi Valley real estate community, says Carlyn Patterson, president of the Simi Valley-Moorpark Assn. of Realtors.

But three lawsuits filed in Ventura County Superior Court over the last five years have alleged that Lechuga has ruined the dreams of three families in complex real estate deals. Lechuga’s actions almost cost one family its credit rating and caused two other clients to lose thousands of dollars, the suits charged.

One plaintiff won her suit, but said she had trouble collecting the $15,000 court award from Lechuga. Another had to drop his suit because he ran out of money, his lawyer said.

The third suit is still in court.

Filed in the spring by Omar and Susana Reggiani, that suit alleges that Lechuga bought his upscale house in January by forging the couple’s names and credit history on loan papers.

Lechuga, who denied the allegations in court documents, declined to say much about any of the cases except that all his accusers are lying.

“On paper, I look really bad in the suit. I know that,” Lechuga said of the Reggianis’ charges. “. . . but it’s not that way.”

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In 1979, Lechuga sold a house on East Victoria Street in Simi Valley to the Reggianis. He’s an Argentina-born furniture maker, and his wife is an assembly line worker.

According to a lawsuit the family filed against Lechuga in May, they asked Lechuga to help them refinance their house in April, 1992.

Then in January, Lechuga and his brother-in-law, Cesar Escobar, borrowed $15,000 from Reggiani, court records show.

Reggiani said in an interview that the loan, for which he was promised a 15% profit within a year, was his life savings, but it sounded like a good investment.

When they learned a few days later that Lechuga’s phone had been disconnected, the Reggianis said, they asked their daughter, Patricia Allen, to commission a title search on the family’s property to make sure that the refinancing had been legitimate.

The search revealed two alarming facts, the suit charges: Someone had forged a $42,000 second trust deed in Escobar’s favor on the Reggianis’ rental property on North Calle la Sombre in Simi Valley. And the Reggianis now owned a newer house on Azure Hills Drive, paid for with a $322,100 loan in their names.

When Reggiani and his daughter went to the Azure Hills house, they found Lechuga living there, they said.

Lechuga asked Reggiani to sign a quitclaim deed on that house, the suit says. That paper--already bearing a notary’s stamp--would transfer the property and mortgage responsibility to Lechuga’s stepdaughter, Claudia Sanchez, according to the suit.

When Reggiani refused, the suit says, Lechuga forged the furniture maker’s signature on the quitclaim and filed it at the Ventura County recorder’s office. Sanchez’s name is on the deed, bank officials and property records showed.

“He decided to impersonate the Reggianis and get credit using their credit rating,” said Joseph Brown, the Reggianis’ lawyer. “They were up to their necks in debt and didn’t even know about it.”

The Reggianis said Simi Valley police told them that they had no criminal case against Lechuga since the bank was the party that had been wronged.

Patterson said the Simi Valley-Moorpark Assn. of Realtors was unaware of the claims against Lechuga.

American Savings Bank, the lender in the deal, has agreed to clear the Reggianis’ credit record of the mortgage, said Joe Rookard, a bank spokesman. Rookard said the bank has also turned over the case for investigation--as law requires with any alleged bank fraud--by the FBI.

Gary Auer, FBI agent in charge in Ventura County, said the FBI does not confirm or deny whether it is investigating anyone.

The state Department of Real Estate, however, is investigating Lechuga, said Randy Brendia, that agency’s regional manager in charge of enforcement.

Brendia said Lechuga has been working with a restricted license since last year, when he was fined $6,000 over a real estate code violation in a 1986 rental deal. The disciplinary action requires an agent to report the violation to his employer and submit to extra supervision. But since Lechuga is self-employed, he was exempt, Brendia said.

The Reggianis are doing their best to recover, hoping that ongoing negotiations by lawyers will reach a settlement to cover the $7,500 spent so far on legal fees and the $15,000 loan to Lechuga, most of which has not been paid back, according to court pleadings.

Escobar has since sued the family, alleging that the promissory note for $15,000 was a fraud perpetrated by the Reggianis, court records show.

“It’s very depressing,” Reggiani said recently, looking at a huge pile of legal papers from the case. “I don’t know what’s happened with this property. . . . I feel too bad for the family about everything.”

In court filings, Lechuga denied the Reggianis’ charges, saying they had failed to prove their allegations and maintaining that the family or someone else caused any loss or damage they suffered.

Lechuga said in an interview that he never defrauded the Reggianis and that they agreed to everything he did involving the Azure Hills Drive house.

“These are lying people,” he said of their allegations.

“Do you believe people are jealous?” Lechuga asked. “Do you believe when they buy a car, they want to have something better than you? Do you believe when you buy clothes, they want to match it or have better? That’s how these people are, exactly, when they saw me in this house.”

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Ramon Villasenor was another client who wound up suing Lechuga, charging that he had lost $17,000 after the realty agent left him with a North Hollywood triplex he did not want and could not afford.

Villasenor, who worked at a Simi Valley manufacturing company, could not be reached for comment on the April, 1992, suit. The action never went to court because Villasenor ran out of money, said Gonzalo Freixes, his former lawyer.

“He acted very improperly for a broker,” Freixes said of Lechuga, who is accused of fraud in the suit. “Mr. Villasenor put every dime he had into his house.”

The suit filed by Villasenor, a co-worker named Jesus Villa and Villa’s son, Salvador, alleges that Villasenor agreed in late 1990 to buy a triplex in North Hollywood through Lechuga.

Although Lechuga refused to let him see inside the building, Villasenor gave him a $17,000 deposit check in January, 1991, but he thought better of it and asked four days later to cancel the purchase, the suit says.

Lechuga promised to return the deposit, but later told him that it was “too late” because now Villasenor legally owned the triplex--even though Villasenor never signed any purchase or escrow papers, the suit says.

Lechuga then told Villasenor to pay overdue utility bills and mortgage papers for the building addressed to Salvador Villa, the suit says.

Jesus and Salvador Villa alleged in the suit that they had begun to buy the same building in June, 1990, but decided to back out of the purchase before escrow closed.

Lechuga let the Villas cancel the escrow in November, 1990, by signing papers--including several blank forms, the suit says.

Eventually, the suit alleges, the Villas learned that Salvador Villa had signed a blank trust deed for the triplex.

Lechuga then filled it in and used Villasenor’s $17,000 to buy the building for Villasenor without either his consent or the Villas’, to earn himself a commission on the sale and the loan supporting it, the suit claims.

Jesus Villa said he and his son wound up losing about $1,000 on the deal; the suit says the deal left him liable for mortgage and other financial obligations.

Villasenor, however, lost his home, Freixes said.

He moved into the triplex, but the bank foreclosed on it when he couldn’t afford the payments, forcing him to move out, Freixes said.

Lechuga did not respond in court to the suit, but his attorney filed a notice that the realty agent had declared bankruptcy on Dec. 15, 1991, months before Villasenor’s suit was filed.

Lechuga declined in an interview to comment on Villasenor’s case.

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In 1991, Blanca Gaeta won a court stipulation ordering Lechuga to pay back $15,000 she had lost by selling her Simi Valley house through the realty agent. But Lechuga paid only a fraction of that amount, said Gaeta and her lawyer, Judith Fogel.

Gaeta had decided to sell the home through Lechuga in 1986, hoping to spend the proceeds on a down payment for a Reseda apartment building that would increase her income, she said.

She signed papers agreeing to sell the house for $148,000 to someone named Jose Valenzuela, expecting to clear $15,812.38, her 1988 suit says.

But Gaeta signed without reading the papers carefully, the suit says, because Lechuga promised to explain them all later.

Gaeta, an Argentina native, said she trusted Lechuga because the Chilean-born realty agent spoke her language and once had helped her and her four children move to a better neighborhood.

She later learned that she had signed an agreement giving up $3,200 of the proceeds for termite work on the house, although there was no evidence of termites, the suit charges.

She also unwittingly had signed an escrow instruction directing all net proceeds from the sale to go to someone named Maria Escobar, who was issued a $15,812.38 check on Christmas Eve, 1986, and cashed it the same day, the suit says.

Gaeta later determined that Valenzuela was an alias for Lechuga, who had funneled all the proceeds to himself and wound up owning her house, the suit says. The people who had moved into her house by the following year were paying rent directly to Lechuga, the suit says.

She eventually lost the apartment building to foreclosure because it had no permits for kitchens, she couldn’t rent the units without them, and she owed $20,000 in mortgage, tax and other fees, Gaeta said.

No bank was involved, she said, and the owner took it back.

After Gaeta won the judgment against Lechuga, Fogel helped Gaeta get a lien on his property. But because the real estate agent declared bankruptcy in 1991, they were never able to collect on the lien, Fogel said.

“He got all this money away from me and away from my children,” Gaeta said recently, still upset. “All my sacrifice--I almost got crazy from this. You work so much time, so many years for nothing. Now I’m living with my son in a mobile home in Canoga Park.”

Lechuga responded in court papers that Gaeta’s suit failed to prove her charges and that she or someone else had caused her loss.

In an interview, Lechuga said of Gaeta’s allegations: “That’s bull, that’s a lie.

“Do you think Blanca Gaeta lost the house the way she said?” Lechuga asked. “She lost the house in Simi, bought the house in Reseda. . . . I got an offer, and she lost it. She didn’t pay the guy: foreclosure.”