Foreclosure Rescue Scammer Hammered With 11+ Years In Slammer For Pocketing $63K+ In Upfront Fees, House Payments From Six Financially Drowning Homeowners & Throwing Them An Anchor

In Ventura County, California, the Ventura County Star reports:

• A woman who lost her house and thousands of dollars to real estate fraud was pleased Tuesday when a judge sentenced the manager of the bogus mortgage business. “I am very happy,” Luz Lechuga said in Spanish in an interview outside the courtroom. “I feel better. Yes, this is justice.”
  
  Ventura County Superior Court Judge James Cloninger sentenced Laura Cecilia Carlson, 66, of Hacienda Heights, to 11 years and eight months despite pleas from the woman’s daughters and lawyer for leniency. The judge ordered her to pay $63,900 to six victims as restitution.
  
  Cloninger said Carlson was in a management role of a criminal enterprise that tricked Ventura County homeowners out of tens of thousands of dollars.
  
  “You ruined people’s lives, you and your crime partners,” Cloninger told Carlson, noting Lechuga’s case in particular. “You took her to the brink of suicide with the harm that you inflicted,” Cloninger said. “They (the victims) were drowning, and so you all decided to throw them an anchor to make sure they would drown.”
  
  Lechuga, who worked in the fields, said in an interview that she had lived for 14 years in her Oxnard home, which was worth $600,000 before she lost it to foreclosure.
  
  Carlson, a licensed real estate agent, and others were arrested in January 2011, according to prosecutors. Prosecutor Dominic Kardum told Cloninger that state licensing officials would be told of the conviction.

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• Carlson ran the business as Global Team Consulting. She trained employees and collected thousands of dollars in upfront fees from clients after promising to reduce the principal and monthly mortgage payments on their homes. Victims were told to stop making mortgage payments and pay the fraudulent company.
  
  The payments instead went into Carlson’s bank account, Kardum said.

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• Carlson’s daughter and two stepdaughters said she was an honest real estate agent who took pride in helping people buy houses.
  
  They gave tearful comments to the judge, saying their mother was an active church member and law-abiding citizen but that her life worsened after her husband died in 2005. They said they were shocked by what had happened, describing Carlson as a woman who always helped others.

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• Cloninger told Carlson’s relatives that if they had heard the facts in the case they would understand the jury’s verdict. The judge said Carlson stole from hardworking, unsophisticated people in a “cold, calculated and heartless way.”
  
  In an interview, Kardum said co-defendants Victoria Santos, Juan Alvarado Cervantes and Felipe Castro have been convicted and that Jose Miguel Aguilar is a fugitive from justice. Carlson will be eligible for parole after serving 50 percent of her sentence, Kardum said.

For the story, see Judge sentences woman to 11 years in real estate scam.

Go here for the Ventura County District Attorney press release.