Faced with foreclosure fraud charges, two lawyers resign

Two lawyers resigned from the State Bar last month in the face of complaints about their loan modification activities and a third was placed on involuntary inactive status.

CHRISTIAN MICHAEL DILLON [#89376], 64, of Dana Point resigned Aug. 3, before any charges were filed. The bar was investigating him as a result of consumer complaints about his affiliation with USMAC Law Group. Dillon has been enrolled as an inactive member of the State Bar and is ineligible to practice law pending a Supreme Court Order accepting his resignation.

NABILE ANZ [#183324], 44, of Irvine, submitted his resignation the following day, a few weeks after bar prosecutors filed an application in the State Bar Court to have him placed on involuntary inactive status. The bar alleged that Anz abandoned clients who retained the Federal Loan Modification Law (FLM) Center by failing to perform legal services for them or return unearned fees, and he did not notify his clients that the law center was closed. In addition to resigning, Anz admitted the misconduct alleged in the bar’s earlier application.

He was charged with more than a half-dozen ethical violations. FLM, prosecutors said, was set up to preclude the involvement of lawyers in determining whether to accept a client and in fact trained case evaluators to accept virtually every client. There was no legal analysis of clients’ cases and Anz’s system of paying case evaluators guaranteed they would lie to potential clients in order to receive their commissions.

The bar had received 39 complaints about Anz after he set up FLM in late 2008. The business operated out of several offices, claiming it received 200,000 inquiries from prospective clients and signing up 8,300 of them. It also claimed it had successfully obtained loan modifications for 942 clients.

In their application to halt Anz’s activities, bar prosecutors wrote: “It should come as no surprise that the scheme to defraud clients unraveled and that (Anz) abandoned his clients … after he took and kept the fees the clients had paid to FLM, which the clients desperately needed to pay their mortgages.”

The bar also moved to place Irvine lawyer CHRISTOPHER DIENER (#187890), 41, who was affiliated with Home Relief Services, on involuntary inactive status. Prosecutors allege that Diener misrepresented the scope of his services to clients, collected advanced fees from clients under false pretenses, and failed to perform any services to obtain a loan modification on behalf of his clients. A hearing was scheduled Aug. 28 in State Bar Court.

In July, Attorney General Jerry Brown sued Diener and his law firm, along with Home Relief Services and two executives, charging they bilked thousands of homeowners out of thousands of dollars each. Home Relief Services charged homeowners more than $4,000 in upfront fees, promised to lower interest rates to 4 percent, convert adjustable-rate mortgages to low fixed-rate loans and reduce principal up to 50 percent within 30 to 60 days, Brown said.

Last month, Brown ordered 386 mortgage foreclosure consultants to post $100,000 bonds and register with his office and ordered more than two dozen companies to justify suspicious loan modification claims made in “slick advertising,” online and through the mail.

One of the demands was made to Alliance Law Center of San Diego, whom Brown directed to substantiate its letters to consumers that warned homeowners their loan might be invalid and stated: “You may qualify for a loan modification saving you thousands of dollars.”

Brown posted a list of companies that have not registered with the attorney general’s office at ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/pdfs/n1780_registry_list.pdf.

The State Bar also continues to investigate dozens of lawyers who may have violated professional responsibility rules in handling foreclosure matters. “As long as the need exists, this office will continue to devote substantial resources to the investigation and prosecution of attorneys who lose sight of their ethical responsibilities and take undue advantage of desperate homeowners under the pretense of helping them with mortgage loan modifications,” said Interim Chief Trial Counsel Russell Weiner.