Prosecutor Seeks Unit to Target Realty Scams

Peddlers of unscrupulous real estate deals would be targeted for prosecution under a proposal by Ventura County’s district attorney.

With the housing market so lucrative, the county needs a prosecution unit to deal exclusively with the complicated cases, Dist. Atty. Gregory Totten said in a report sent last week to the Board of Supervisors.

Under the proposal, the district attorney’s office would hire an attorney and an investigator to form a centralized unit at a cost of about $250,000 annually. It would be covered by a $2 hike in the county’s fee for recording real estate documents, Totten stated in the request, which the board will take up today.

“We would have some serious expertise available,” said Jeffrey G. Bennett, a chief deputy district attorney. “Whoever is doing this will only be doing this and will be able to handle cases more effectively and more efficiently.”

Over time, the unit would grow, as needs increased and additional revenue became available, Bennett said.

Victims of real estate fraud are most often seniors or Spanish-speakers who don’t realize they’ve been swindled until it’s too late, Bennett said. A sophisticated criminal can use predatory lending schemes to victimize dozens of people at a time, he said.

In a recent case, a Santa Paula man posing as an intermediary for several Spanish-speaking homeowners stole $500,000 that should have been distributed to them after the foreclosure of their homes, district attorney’s officials said.

The same man defrauded an elderly acquaintance out of $435,000 in the phony sale of a Christmas tree farm that was not for sale, officials said.

In Oxnard, several other Spanish-speaking homeowners were swindled by a junior loan officer who offered them lower monthly payments on their mortgages.

But their new payments were actually higher and the loan officer profited from commissions on the refinancings, investigators said.

Totten’s office will put a high priority on cases in which victims are threatened with the loss of their homes, Bennett said. Common scams include bait-and-switch mortgages, forged documents and refinancings that cost the consumer more than the original loan, officials said.

A 1995 state law authorized counties to impose the fee hike as a way to deal with burgeoning real estate crimes. At least eight other counties, including Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego, have established similar units, Bennett said.

Under the plan, the Ventura County clerk and recorder’s office would charge $9 to record the first page of a document and maintain the $3 fee for each additional page.

Oxnard Police Assistant Chief Bryan MacDonald said the city would welcome the help. Oxnard is Ventura County’s largest city, with 187,000 residents, 67% of whom are Latino.

“These are very complex investigations and they are very labor intensive,” MacDonald said, “so we fully support what they are doing.”

Joan Allen, who tracks financial abuse against seniors in Ventura County, praised the idea. With median home prices near $700,000, Ventura County has become an attractive target for shady operators, she said.

“Anytime there are profits to be made, the scammers find the vulnerable market,” she said.