Duo Held in Housing Scam

(MCT)—A Monterey Park, California couple was arrested Wednesday for allegedly bilking about 100 elderly owners out of their homes, officials said

Officials at the California Department of Justice said Jesus Duran Aguayo and his wife, Sofia Aguayo, both 52, stole homes from elderly and sick people in order to rent them out.

Officials said the financial losses of the victims total about $5 million and that the Monterey Park couple had collected about $10,000 a month from renters. The two are being held at Los Angeles County Jail in lieu of $1.4 million bail each.

Jesus Duran Aguayo, a real estate broker, and his wife, who is a real estate agent, allegedly looked for properties that were behind inproperty taxes and checked out the houses to see if anyone lived there.

If no one did, officials said, the Aguayo’s would then pay the delinquent taxes, file phony deeds and transfer the property to themselves with no permission from the owner.

Many times, the owners of the homes were infirm and living in nursing homes, according to court papers.

"It's kind of a version of the old, illegal squatting scam," said Tom Dresslar, spokesman for the state attorney general'soffice. "They committed fraud on a substantial scale to take homes out from under people."

Officials allege the Aguayo’s have been committing these crimes for about five years.

Dresslar said many times the victims' belongings, including family photos and irreplaceable items, were trashed or taken.

When confronted by concerned neighbors or family, the couple would lie or forge documents to keep the house, Dresslar said.

In one case, Jesus Duran Aguayo told a concerned neighbor the homeowner had died and he bought the house.

However, the home owner, 78-year-old Richard Dee was at a nursing home after a brief hospitalization.

"I've lived there almost my whole life, my parents lived there, and we were all honest hard working people," said Dee,whose 1967 red Ford Mustang also disappeared when the Aguayo’s took over his Los Angeles house. "It was very disturbing to find out they had taken all this from me."

The Aguayo’s face 21 felony charges, including grand theft, residential burglary, forgery, vandalism, trespassing, filing false documents, elder abuse and conspiracy.

Tom Pool, a spokesman for the California Department of Real Estate, said the best way for a person to shield against this type of crime isto pay property taxes on time, and have a set of friends or family who will watch over a home owner's property.

"If you're delinquent on your house payment, often times that's a flash point for different thieves and scams," Pool said."In this particular case, obviously the only way around that is to make sure your taxes are current."

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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