A 40-year-old woman and 52-year-old man pleaded guilty Friday in connection with a scheme to help an elderly woman illegally take out a second mortgage on her home in Garden Grove and stealing from her bank account.
Willmar Lainez pleaded guilty to procuring or offering a false or forged document to be filed, forgery, theft from an elder adult and identity theft, all felonies. Lainez was immediately sentenced to a year in jail and placed on two years of formal probation.
Lainez has until Oct. 13 to report to jail, but will be able to seek permission to serve the time in home confinement, according to court records. Lainez has credit for two days in custody.
Christina Espinosa Aldana, a paralegal in the Orange County District Attorney’s Office at the time of the crimes, pleaded guilty to one felony count of forgery and a misdemeanor count of forgery, according to court records. Her sentencing was set for Aug. 2, 2024.
Aldana’s attorney, Mark Fredrick, said if she does not pick up any criminal violations before then the felony will be reduced to a misdemeanor. She will face 90 days in jail, but will be able to serve it under home confinement, Fredrick said.
“She needed to put this case behind her and move on,” Fredrick said. “Ultimately, she just put her trust in the wrong people.”
Co-defendant Thalia Lugo-Lainez pleaded guilty in April 2017 and was sentenced in June of that year to two years and eight months in prison, or the same amount of time she had credit for serving in custody.
Lugo-Lainez and Lainez lived with the victim, who was Lainez’s grandmother, who died in 2014.
When they were charged in 2015, former Senior Deputy District Attorney Pete Pierce said, “It’s financial elder abuse 101… The adult grandchildren, with minor children, move in with grandmother under the agreement that they’ll take care of her and get free room and board in exchange.”
The couple secured a second mortgage on the home, amounting to $75,000, and pocketed the funds without the victim’s knowledge, and were also accused of emptying her bank account of about $40,000.
Aldana, who is a notary public, took the thumb print of Lugo-Lainez and filed the documents for the second mortgage claiming it was the victim’s thumb print.
The fraud, which occurred between Nov. 7, 2008, and January 2009, came to light when the victim called the bank to see why she was no longer getting printed statements on her account, Pierce said.
She was told she had opted for a “paperless” statement from the bank online, according to the prosecutor.
The victim alerted her daughter, who ended up turning her own daughter in to police, Pierce said.