In a case involving financial elder abuse, a 40-year-old woman and a 52-year-old man have pleaded guilty to multiple charges. The scheme involved helping an elderly woman in Garden Grove to illegally obtain a second mortgage on her home and stealing from her bank account.
Willmar Lainez, who pleaded guilty to several felonies including forgery, theft from an elder adult, and identity theft, has been sentenced to a year in jail and placed on formal probation for two years. Lainez may have the opportunity to serve the jail time through home confinement, with the deadline to report by October 13th.
Christina Espinosa Aldana, a former paralegal in the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, has pleaded guilty to forgery as a felony and misdemeanor. Her sentence is scheduled for August 2, 2024. If Aldana refrains from committing any further criminal violations, the felony charge will be reduced to a misdemeanor. Her jail term will consist of 90 days, which can be served through home confinement, according to her attorney, Mark Fredrick.
“She needed to put this case behind her and move on,” Fredrick stated. “Ultimately, she just put her trust in the wrong people.”
Co-defendant Thalia Lugo-Lainez had previously pleaded guilty in April 2017 and was sentenced in June of the same year. She received a prison term of two years and eight months, equivalent to the time she had already served in custody. Lugo-Lainez and Lainez resided with the victim, who was Lainez’s grandmother and passed away in 2014.
In 2015, when the charges were filed, former Senior Deputy District Attorney Pete Pierce described the case as “financial elder abuse 101.” He explained that “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 obtained a second mortgage of $75,000 on the victim’s home without her knowledge and also drained her bank account of approximately $40,000. Aldana, who is a notary public, falsely used the victim’s thumbprint to file the documents for the second mortgage. The fraudulent activities occurred between November 7, 2008, and January 2009. The victim became aware of the scam when she noticed the absence of printed statements and contacted her bank.
The bank informed her that she had opted for “paperless” statements online, which she had not done. Upon discovering this, the victim’s daughter reported the situation to the police.
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