Charges Dropped in Loan Forgery Case

Prosecutors have reluctantly dismissed criminal charges against a man accused of forging his cousin’s signature to gain title to her homes.

The district attorney’s office filed forgery and grand theft charges against Jesus Serrano, who allegedly tricked Maria Serrano into signing a document allowing him to use her two homes in Temple City as collateral for a $96,000 loan.

When the loan went unpaid, the bank that held the loan, World Savings, foreclosed, took possession of the homes and sold them. Maria Serrano was forced to move out last month.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary Ganahl said World Savings erred by evicting Serrano because the facts clearly indicated she was a victim of a forgery and should not have been held responsible for repaying the loan her cousin obtained.

“I’ve had a lot of cases where there’s moral ambiguity,” she said, but “this is a case where it’s clearly black and white. World Savings needed to face that and return the house” to Serrano.”

Officials from World Savings declined to comment. However, a report prepared by a fraud investigator for the bank and filed with the district attorney’s office in December 1999, stated: “[I]t is apparent that the signatures of Maria del Carmen Serrano appearing in the World Savings loan file are forged and that the person responsible is probably Jesus Serrano.”

Despite that finding, World Savings persuaded a judge to hold Maria Serrano responsible for the loan.

Ganahl said she decided not to pursue the criminal charges against Jesus Serrano after another judge’s order made it uncertain whether Maria Serrano would be allowed to testify against her cousin. The judge said Maria Serrano would have to undergo a battery of psychological tests before taking the stand because prosecutors had portrayed her as the naive victim of her cousin’s swindle.

“She needed protection, she didn’t need to be prodded and poked by psychiatrists,” Ganahl said. “It’s very sad when someone that uneducated and inexperienced is required to have a greater standard of proof in order to tell the truth.”

Her cousin remains in custody on an unrelated robbery charge.

Maria Serrano bought her Temple City homes with money from the settlement of a lawsuit after the death of her 8-year-old son, Brian. The boy died in 1995 when a compactor piston burst from a Los Angeles trash truck and tore into the school bus on which the boy was a passenger.

Serrano sued the city of Los Angeles and split a $2.5-million settlement with her family. In addition to buying the two-house property in Temple City, she purchased a market in El Monte from her uncle.

“She spends a lot of time talking to her dead son,” said Serrano’s attorney, Manuel Duran. “She feels like she’s responsible because she wasn’t smart enough” to avoid losing the homes.