Residents:

GLENDALE — Dozens of homeowners claim they paid for loan litigation services with Los Angeles-based Bander Law Firm and never saw any legal action taken in their cases, causing some homes to foreclose.

The homeowners gathered Saturday for a news conference inside a Glendale Days Inn Motel banquet hall, where several signs calling for attorney Joel Bander’s disbarment lined on the walls.

Daniel De Leon said he paid the law firm $12,000 to sue his bank to lower mortgage payments on his Hesperia home.

But he claims the law firm never gave him updates on the status of his case until it was too late and his home was in foreclosure.

“What we wanted them to do is not what they are doing,” De Leon said.

He said he wants his money back.

Other homeowners at the news conference called on attorneys who are suing the law firm to give them advice on their next move.

“You guys have been cheated in the worst way that I could possibly imagine,” attorney Anne Singer said. “Going to a lawyer, asking for help and not only having your money being taken away from you, but many of you losing your homes, and from what I understand some of you have been put in bankruptcy without your knowledge.”

Singer said the law firm targeted Filipinos and Koreans by advertising in foreign newspapers.

Tujunga resident Hannah Kim’s father read one of the law firm’s advertisements and requested its services. She said he paid the law firm $6,000.

She said the law firm gave her father the runaround, and then he went to another law firm to help him with his home loan.

Kim has been trying to settle her father’s legal woes because he speaks little English. But the experience has left her family skeptical.

“We just have a mistrust in lawyers,” she said.

Montrose attorney John Miller represents 20 clients who sought help from the law firm. He filed a complaint, which is still pending, with the State Bar of California against the law firm in September, said Singer, who spoke on behalf of Miller.

The state bar has never contacted the law firm about complaints lodged against them, according to the law firm’s news release.

In an e-mail, Bander denied the homeowners’ and attorneys’ complaints, saying “he wouldn’t be surprised” if Balita Media, a Filipino news service, paid them to set up the evening news conference.

“The reality is that with about 800 mortgage clients, not everyone is going to keep their homes,” he said in an e-mail.