A San Mateo County jury has found a Los Angeles actor guilty of scamming a 66-year-old Redwood City woman into selling her house for a third of its market value,
Justin Rodgers Hall, 43, owner of Rex Regum LLC, was found guilty of 15 charges, including felony money laundering, filing a false document, perjury, theft from an elder, commercial burglary, attempted grand theft and grand theft, the East Bay Times reported.
He was also convicted of several special allegations, including theft over $100,000, theft over $500,000 and “planning sophistication or professionalism.”
The South Carolina native, who played bit parts and appeared as a stuntman in such movies as “The Incredible Hulk” and “Hellboy II,” is slated to be sentenced on June 17. He could serve up to 21 years in state prison.
“Sometimes, justice takes time. This one here took persistence from our prosecutor,” San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe told the newspaper. “This man is a fraud, he cheated people.
“Hopefully now he will receive the sentence he deserves for being a fraud in our community.”
The reverse mortgage scam included Hall, a resident of Van Nuys, and Tonika Miller, a 38-year-old licensed real estate agent based in Studio City, in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley.
Weeks before the July 2018 auction of a home that belongs to a Redwood City woman who had defaulted on property taxes, Miller, a licensed real estate agent, and Hall took her to Applebee’s, prosecutors said.
They bought her two margaritas and then offered her a $500,000 “reverse mortgage,” granting her the right to live on the property until her death, prosecutors said.
Both would be convicted of convincing the unidentified Redwood City woman in 2018 to sell her house, valued between $1.5 million and $1.7 million, for about a third of that.
Even after the crooked deal, prosecutors said, Hall and Miller gave the woman only $2,000 in cash, reneged on a promise to let her stay on the property until her death, and sold the property to a third party, who then attempted to evict the woman.
Miller pleaded no contest to charges against her in 2020 and served three years and four months in prison.
Hall’s trial on the same charges resulted in a hung jury, with all but one juror voting to convict, so prosecutors tried again and obtained a guilty verdict.
His defense attorney, Charles Smith III, said he planned to appeal the guilty verdict.
Smith said the victim didn’t lose her house, since the whole transaction had been undone, and was never kicked to the curb. A real estate investor that bought the house from Hall was also reimbursed from title insurance.
Although Hall didn’t commit a “victimless crime,” Smith said “both victims have been made whole, and we’ll ask judges to take that into consideration.”
— Dana Bartholomew
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