Campbell Co-Owners of Foreclosure Consulting Firm Sentenced to 5 Years

After nearly three years, the case that left nearly 400 homeowners out of $2.2 million dollars is coming to an end.

On July 16, co-owners of a Campbell foreclosure consulting firm, M & R Contemporary Solutions Inc. on 1845 Winchester Blvd. Rene Alvarez, 39, and Mariano Ortega, 34, pled guilty and were sentenced to five years in state prison each. As part of their plea deal, however, they will serve their time in local county jail and will serve two years in custody and three years in mandatory supervision, said Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney David Lim.

The charges the two were convicted of include grand theft and recording false documents.

Alvarez and Ortega were indicted by the Santa Clara Grand Jury in what the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office called a "wide-ranging loan modification scam."

According to the DA's office, the scam involved telling homeowners that M & R would save their homes from foreclosure by "facilitating the purchase of their existing lender’s loan by a third party at a discounted price." Then, these homeowners would be offered "a new, reduced principal loan that would have significantly lower monthly payments." 

"This was one of the largest, if not largest real estate fraud cases in the county's history," said now retired Santa Clara Deputy District Attorney Mike Fitzsimmons.

According to the DA's office, the two men, along with Cydney Sanchez, 60, of Los Angeles, were arraigned in April 2010 on an 83-count indictment, which charged them with defrauding 45 homeowners in eight Northern California counties over a one-year period.

The client list however spanned through seven known states, including: California, Hawaii, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, and Florida. The vast majority, however, were from California, especially from Bay Area counties, Fitzsimmons said in a previous interview.

Alvarez and Ortega owned and operated the Campbell foreclosure-consulting firm from 2008-09.

The DA's office was first alerted to the suspicious activity at M & R in late July 2009, Fitzsimmons said. As a result of the investigation, Alvarez and Ortega were both arrested in Sept. 2009.