Prosecutors add counts in alleged Bay Area mortgage scam

State prosecutors added new charges Monday in the case of a former Petaluma real estate agent accused of defrauding dozens of clients across the Bay Area in an alleged mortgage modification scam.

Miguel Angel Lopez-Soleta, 43, now faces 65 felony counts accusing him of bilking people out of more than $110,000 in fees through his Rohnert Park business, Mortgage Modifiers, from 2011 to 2012.

The additional charges up the stakes for Lopez-Soleta, who would receive a mandatory state prison sentence if convicted at trial. He has pleaded not guilty and is free on $215,000 bail.

At the courthouse Monday, people who say they were ripped off by Lopez-Soleta jeered him as he walked down a hallway. “He looked me in the eye and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll help you,’” said Dan Steele of Santa Rosa, who claims he lost $2,150 in upfront fees to Lopez-Soleta in 2012. “Then he stole my money.”

Lopez-Soleta declined to comment but his lawyer, Stephen Turer, called the case against him a “witch hunt.” Turer said Sonoma and Marin county prosecutors have already declined to bring charges in what he characterized as a civil contract dispute.

It is unclear why the state Attorney General’s Office is now taking up the case, he said.

“He’s a bad businessman,” Turer said. “There’s a big difference between being a bad businessman and being a criminal.”

In fact, Turer said, Lopez-Soleta put together nearly 500 successful mortgage modification packages before closing in 2013. Some of the people who are complaining had their applications rejected by banks, Turer said.

But Steele and others said that’s not the case at all.

Lopez-Soleta promised to reduce Steele’s mortgage payments to $1,300 and get $100,000 taken off his loan, Steele said.

But nothing happened a year or so after he paid his fee, he said. When he asked his lender about it, bank officials told him they never received modification request paperwork, Steele said.

Steele said the same thing happened in dozens of cases he knows about in Marin and Sonoma counties. Some people lost their homes over it, he said.

Lopez-Soleta was arrested by state agents in May on charges of fraud, grand theft, financial crimes against the elderly and burglary.

The initial complaint lists 23 alleged victims. The new number wasn’t immediately available.

Records show Lopez-Soleta and his wife, Heidi Beth Marks-Lopez, filed for bankruptcy last year, asking the court to discharge more than $3 million in debt. The filing identifies 537 creditors, many of whom said they owned homes in the North Bay and that Lopez-Soleta took thousands of dollars from them.

You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 568-5312 or paul.payne@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ppayne.