Texas Judge Gets Five Years Probation For Using Forged Signatures To Obtain Mortgage On Home Owned By Another

In Edinburg, Texas, The Monitor reports:

• Elsa Municipal Judge Hilda Caceres was sentenced Wednesday to five years of probation for faking required signatures on a $227,000 loan application. An Hidalgo County jury took three hours Tuesday night to convict the suspended magistrate on four counts of forgery after a trial in which she maintained the charges amounted to nothing more than a personal dispute between her and a woman to whom she had sold an Elsa home.

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• The charges against her stemmed from a loan she and her ex-husband, Elsa City Commissioner Cain Caceres, took out in September 2009 to stave off foreclosure on another property they owned. Because the couple was already $700,000 in debt, they used an Elsa home they were in the process of selling to Elsa resident Nora Delgado as collateral.(1)

• But prosecutors alleged throughout the six-day trial that Hilda Caceres never obtained Delgado’s consent and instead forged the woman’s signature on loan paperwork. She had an employee at the county judge’s office — where she also worked at the time — notarize the documents as if Delgado had signed them in her presence.

For the story, see Judge sentenced for forged signatures on loan documents.

For an earlier report on this story, see Grand jury indicts justice of the peace candidate on forgery charges:

• Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño has said his office’s investigation centers on a piece of real estate that Caceres shares with Nora Delgado and used as collateral for the loan. [...] The seven-count indictment filed Dec. 23 alleges Caceres forged Delgado’s signature on three documents on May 14: a deed of trust, an assignment of leases and rents, and an affidavit of identity.

(1) Presumably, ownership rights to the home in question had already been conveyed by the judge to the victim pursuant to some form of a deferred payment arrangement (ie. contract for deed, owner-financed sale, lease-purchase, or some other similar deal) at the time of the alleged forgeries.