Judged:
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Scam artists are the best salesmen in the world. Their first objective is to enter your life, befriend you and gain your trust. Some go as far as meeting you in churches and gain so much of your friendship and trust that you almost begin to think of them as family members.
Case in point the latest victims of yet another real estate and mortgage scam in San Jose and the Bay Area ran by a mortgage broker by the name of Michael Joseph Schneider as reported by the San Jose Mercury News and on a report from the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal when Schneider’s fraudulent deals were first being discovered.
Michael J. Schneider, who lived in Hillsborough, ran a brokerage called California Plan Inc and used money from a group of Santa Cruz, California investor to fund mortgages on real estate throughout the Bay Area.
Allegedly stole over $43,000,000 dollars from a group of investors who were led to believe that they were making secured real estate loans through Schneider‘s company, California Plan, Inc.
Michael Schneider owned and operated California Plan Inc since 1993 which has locations at 3595 Stevens Creek Road in San Jose and another in Sacramento. Schneider‘s company specialized in finding and servicing “equity mortgage loans” from private money lenders (investors) as reported by the Mortgage Fraud Blog.
Soon investors discovered that in most instances, Schneider failed, as promised, to secure their loans with validly recorded deeds of trust by forging documents. Instead, Schneider would provide the investors with phony deeds of trust and just keep the investor’s money.
Recently, in Santa Clara County Superior Court, a roomful of at least 50 victims and their families faced this “predator,” as described by the victims; and many gave their heart wrenching testimonials describing their feelings of betrayal, shame and humiliation after learning they had been deceived by a man who had attended their children’s weddings and college graduations.
“Our savings are completely gone. We’ve had to sell every item we could. We are very depressed, and feel so frustrated, that we must count every penny,” said 76-year-old Henry Bertrand.
“I was shaken to the core,”“It was like he had taken a knife and put it in my heart” added 80-year-old Mel Nashban, explaining that he had come to think of Schneider as a member of his own family.
Several of the other victims said they were robbed of their retirement plans and were forced to sell their homes, their cars and other property to survive.
Prosecutors from Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties, who joined forces because Schneider’s victims lived in both jurisdictions, urged the judge to consider a sentence of at least 62 years.
“Let Michael Schneider stay in jail until he is my age, 85, and then see how he likes it to start over with nothing,” said Clinton Cooper, another victim, who said he lost almost $3 million that he had saved.
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