Tag Archive for: Corruption

​For people who have lost their homes and their children due to a California divorce or custody case in the past two decades, it might not come as a surprise that a federal investigation into a college cheating scandal that snapped up power couples including Elizabeth and Manuel Henriquez of Atherton, CA  as well as  celebrity moms Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman is now connected to real estate scams and criminal lawyers operating in the state’s family courts. it is also connected to one grand jury investigation of Contra Costa County Assessor Gus Kramer, and here is how courts are covering up what they are doing in California when it comes to family homes.. . . . . . . 

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After accepting plea deals,  the Henriquezs are rumored to be consulting with divorce attorneys at McManis Faulkner and Hoover Krepelka Law Firms. The cheating scandal is rumored to be a ” boom for Silicon Valley divorce lawyers”.  Sources report Silicon Valley divorce attorneys have been overheard  discussing new potential clients flooding into their offices and how these lawyers are planning on ratcheting up overbilling and deceptive business practices that will include: duping clients into private judging cases and kissing up to get court appointments as minor’s counsel and custody evaluators in divorce or custody cases. 

REAL ESTATE SCAM EXPOSED: Contra Costa County Assessor Gus Kramer Indicted Exposes DA Office and Supervisor Corruption 

While seemingly unrelated, the indictment and disbarment of Contra Costa County DA Mark Peterson appears to have unraveled systemic corruption in California’s  courts and politics that reveals  systemic failures that have harmed families and two generations of children. 

A former Contra Costa County Grand Jury involved in a CPS investigation, provided an off record account of how a grand jury investigation linked public corruption in Solano, Contra Costa, Santa Clara and Orange County to lawyer- doctor and former Contra Costa Supervisor Jeff Smith, who is now the county executive in Santa Clara County: 

May 2018- Grand Jurors were first alerted to problems when parents marched on the streets of the sleepy Bay Area bedroom community of Walnut Creek. No arrests were made , but over 500 parents picketed, marched and protested from a community park to the steps of a courthouse where they claimed corrupt CPS workers and three female judges were involved in trafficking children after  their  parents were forced through a corrupt court system. Judges at the focus of the march were Fannin, Hardie and Haight . 

Summer 2018- Judge Bruce Mills,  reportedly been on the take for bribes delivered in  the form of real estate deals and cash kickbacks assured by nefarious slumlord   John Evilsizor , resigned  from the Contra Costa bench after the CJP closed in on Mills in a 5th investigation related to the improper jailing of Evilsizor’s former son- in-law in a custody case Mills presided over for several years. 

This was also the time when parents returned to Contra Costa and marched on the streets of Martinez, through the downtown ,  civic center, the steps of the courthouse and where they pounded on the doors of the District Attorney’s Office, despite DA Mark Peterson having been indicted, disgraced and disbarred  a year earlier. 

September 2018- it was revealed that DA Mark Peterson had been working to catch and kill complaints about county assessor Gus Kramer, a corrupt politician who  reportedly turned a blind eye when it came to real estate complaints arising from the county’s family court cases. 

February 2019- Parents had garnered enough support to get the recall of Judges Hardie, Fannin and Haight  on the local ballot, but an attack and complaint filed to the FPPC  by a judge lobbyist derailed the plan. The lobbyist reportedly focused on the Contra Costa group because of the wide spread media attention the group got, and following the landslide vote in Santa Clara County, that had recalled Judge Persky on June 5, 2018, after a successful political campaign was led by Stanford professor Michele Dauber. 

                                    HOW THEY GET THE FAMILY HOME 

Converting home equity into cash for attorney fees in divorce cases was something that had been mastered in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, but Contra Costa was late to the Silicon Valley home equity party, given its more remote location and longer commute to the Google, Facebook and other tech giant campuses. 

As parents picketed and protested in Contra Costa, they fought judicially corrupt family courts in Solano County by launching a recall of Judge Carringer in 2017, which did not go to vote, and which was turned into an impeachment request to the State Assembly in April of 2018. 

It was in Santa Clara County, where Jeff Smith hung his new employment shingle, that Stanford University Law Professor Michele Dauber launched a successful political campaign to recall Judge Aaron Persky. It is said that from 2016- 2018 Dauber had the help and assistance of DA Jeff Rosen, DDA Terry Harman. Alah Kinerci, Cindy Hendrickson and Luis Ramos, but she also had the help of executives at Google, Facebook and Twitter based on connections her husband Ken Dauber had as a Google executive serving on as a Board Member on the  Palo Alto School District. It is also believed that Dauber had assistance from the Supervisors, Cindy Chavez, Joe Smitian, Ken Yeager, Dave Cortese and Mike Wasserman, who allowed DA Rosen to let angry #metoo mobs drown out parents seeking to bring attention to the county’s unscrupulous judges including Judge Maureen Folan,  Judge Vincent Chiarello, Judge James Towery, Judge Mary Ann Grilli, Judge Julie Emede, Judge Roberta Hyashi, Judge Beth McGowan, Judge McCracken, Judge Cynthia Lie,  and Judge Stuart Scott. 

By early 2017, court clerk David Yamasaki had moved from Santa Clara’s courts, to Orange County, where he was reportedly working to cover up construction fraud and family court fraud arising from the county’s private judging cases before retired Judge David Weinberg, Judge Moss, Judge Larsh  and Judges employed through JAMS . No recalls had occurred in Orange County however former DA Tony Rackauckas was ousted by voters who put Todd Spitzer in the DA’s office as voters demanded Spitizer begin looking at the county’s family courts and real estate scandals rising from the family courts. 

                   Grand Juror Leaks Investigation Techniques

” We interviewed the parents and protest organizers” , explained the former Contra Costa Grand Juror, ” That led us to issue the CPS report by the summer of 2019″ 
A copy of the report can be seen at this link. 

“Simultaneously  we looked at the county assessor where these corrupt real estate deals appeared to be being concealed and protected. We knew Gus Kramer had an alliance with the former DA Mark Peterson, and once Peterson was disbarred and indicted, Kramer had no more shield, so we nailed him.”​

As to the systemic corruption, the former Grand Juror had this to say: 

” Look we know it is bad, but we are not the worst. The worst corruption is coming from Santa Clara and Orange Counties. The State Bar, and all of the watchdogs charged with protecting the public are afraid to touch those counties, after all, they have planted Google. Facebook and Twitter investors, founders and shareholders in their courts, contracts and Supervisor’s pockets.

“It was an interview we did with a former hospital employee who was familiar with Jeff Smith that made us realize how dangerous Santa Clara County has become and we just couldn’t go there”. 

Mitchell Papers:  Real Estate Corruption Linked to  Family Court Lawyers and Judges

Before ending the interview, the former Grand Juror noted they had reviewed what are being called the Mitchell Papers. The papers show cash payments made to cops, judges and lawyers like something out of a Chicago mobster movie. The local bar association appears to be the shell organization feeding the enterprise where billions, NOT millions, of dollars are being converted in family law cases to pay lawyers who are paying off judges, private judges and other lawyers by paying down home equity lines of credit on the homes, rental properties and vacation homes of those operating what is clearly a criminal enterprise.  

For example, the county assessor in Santa Clara, Larry Stone,  is known for his flagrant extra marital affairs, yet the grand jury,  DA and Supervisors have left Larry Stone alone. Stone, who started out in small level government in Sunnyvale, became obsessed with power and connections to the Democratic party in the county. A party that essentially runs the state.  Stone also continued to flaunt his extra martial relationships which have been actively concealed from his wife by Walter Hammon’s wife, Meri Maben, and newly elected Supervisor Susan Ellenberg. 

Stone, who is nearly 80, had a home nearly paid off, but now carries a $600K loan. It is rumored that Jeff Smith’s right hand man, Steve Preminger, assures these loans are paid off with deferred payments when nobody is watching, and it is divorce attorney Walter Hammon who is brining in divorce clients high level Silicon Valley connections at YouTube, Paypal, Facebook, Google Twitter , Nvidia and even the Department of Justice that makes sure this enterprise remains in tact and meeting bribe and payment obligations. 

Steve Preminger, Jeff Smith’s top aide,  was recently reported as working with tech and social media executives  to assure Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese could knock out his political opponents by shadow banning social media accounts and burying political adversaries or court reform candidates in search engines powered by Google. 

In closing, the grand juror noted: 

“All local governments have the potential to be corrupted. When the grand jury doesn’t look, the DA’s don’t indict and the Supervisors or city managers are complicit, the courts will be corrupted and people will rise up and march in the streets as they did in our sleepy little town of Walnut Creek. We tried to do something about it, I hope it wasn’t too little , or too late.”