If you missed my podcast with Jodee Sussman, check it out here.

Jodee and I discussed the conservatorship ring which swallowed up Jodee’s mom which operates in Orange County, California’s probate court. Here is more on the ring that Jodee described.

The alleged “head of the snake” is Ruben Martinez and attorney/wife Teresa Gorman. Their company, Fiduciary Real Estate Service, allegedly sells the properties of the victims after “managing” and devaluing them. They allegedly sell to their “cronies” who flip shortly after at great profit.

Gorman has been the attorney for many unscrupulous fiduciary including Huntington. If not in fact a conflict of interest, definitely quid pro quo.

The alleged attorneys involved in many of these conspiracies are Eric Francis Becker, Samantha Jean Morris, David Neal Shaver, Neil Knuppel, and Ernest Hayward.

The alleged conservators involved are Richard Huntington, Sally Cicerone, Judith A Okonski, Lee Ann and Bruce Hitchman.

There are over 25 families that can attest to this pattern of conduct. Their are other attorneys and fiduciaries also involved in over a decade of wrong doings all over SoCal. The common denominator is FRES!

Those folks are not the only corrupt actors who have taken advantage of the elderly through conservatorship in Orange County, CA. Another corrupt guardian, Sally Cicerone, operating in OC was also recently busted. Here is more from the Orange County Register.

One of Orange County’s most prolific probate conservators, accused of transferring thousands of dollars without consent from the account of a dead client whom she no longer represented, has surrendered her state license.

Sally W. Cicerone of Laguna Hills must resign as a fiduciary from 43 existing cases and can no longer take any new clients under the agreement approved in April by the state Professional Fiduciaries Bureau.

The bureau, a division of the California Department of Consumer Affairs, accused Cicerone of repeatedly transferring money out of financial accounts for the Santa Barbara-based Brouhard Trust even though she no longer represented the client. She also failed to notify the probate court of the transactions. The agreement becomes effective July 27.

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In the Brouhard case, Cicerone allegedly transferred more than $63,500 out of the trust and placed it in her attorney’s trust account without proper consent. She also closed out the client’s checking account and transferred the $33,574 balance to her attorney’s account. When notified of errors and poor record-keeping, she charged thousands of dollars to correct it, the complaint said.

The attorney was not named in the accusation but was identified as Jeffrey Vanderveen in a separate appellate court ruling. Together they charged the trust $3,425 in traveling fees to attend a court hearing on the improper transactions in Santa Barbara.