Complaint Review: Gary Lane - Santa Ana, CA 92704 Internet

I am writing because I also used to work for Consumer Protection Legal Services about a year ago. I am writing to support all of the others on here that have posted on how terrible this company is. To start, this company is controlled by Pepe Abad. Pepe Abad has numerous lawsuits in his name according to the Orange County Superior Court website (www.occourts.org) Pepe Abad is the one in the large office, the employees all consider him the boss and it appears he only brought Gary Lane on board when he realized he couldn't continue to provide loan mods without an attorney in house or charge advanced fees. So Pepe Abad brought Gary Lane in and stuck him in a tiny little office off to the side to rubber stamp terribly drafted unspecific blanket complaints against lenders. The office itself purports to be two separate businesses, one a real estate business and the other Consumer Protection Legal Services. They are both controlled and completely dominated by Pepi Abad. A brief search on any one of these three names/business will reveal a considerable and growing wave of anger against these individuals. It is only a matter of time until the California Bar Association steps in and takes Gary Lane's license to practice. I have personally contacted the California Bar Association's consumer/fraud department and recounted the following story and provided my full name and address in the event that they need to contact me in the future to corroborate my story. I STRONGLY SUGGEST ANYBODY ELSE WHO HAS HAD A PROBLEM TO DO THE SAME.

I am currently a law student with 1 year left. I understand very clearly the California Rules of Professional Conduct for lawyers.

Shortly after I was hired I realized that this firm is extremely unethical and operates on the very fringe of legality if not wholly in violation of the CA Ruels of Professional Conduct. The most egregious conduct was perpetrated by both Marithza Abad (Pepi Abad's sister and "head" paralegal) and Gary Lane. A poor Spanish speaking individual had paid a retainer of about $5,000 to have somebody sue his lenders, identify mortgage fraud, and force the lender to renegotiate this loan. His loan was an 80/20 complete finance, he barely made enough to cover the first mortgage per his stated-income loan application that more likely than not inflated his income to obtain the loan in the first place. In any case this individual hired Gary Lane and CPLS prior to his house being foreclosed. Some 3-6 months after paying the retainer the client's home was sold and nothing was done by CPLS on his behalf. He called in to speak with Marithza Abad and was very upset. He stated that he was coming to our office to pick up a refund on his retainer since NOTHING had been done on his file except for some background documents were obtained (deed of trust, copies of loan documents - which may have been provided by the client personally) Marithza Abad informed him that Gary Lane was out of the office on that day but that he would be in tomorrow and that it would be best if the client came in when the attorney was there so he could speak directly to the attorney. The reality was that Gary Lane was in the office and could have seen him that day. The reality is that Marithza was just buying time. Immediately after getting off the phone and speaking with Gary, she brought the file to me and asked me to prepare the Complaint, Summons and to make as long as possible. The purpose she said was to avoid having to provide him a complete refund by showing him that we have prepared a very detailed complaint on his behalf that took the attorney almost 3 hours to prepare. This would allow CPLS to retain somewhere in the area of $1,000-$2,000 of the retainer as the work had already been performed. The reality is if the individual could read English he would have gone through the Complaint and seen it was little more than several other form complaints cut/pasted together with little, if any, reference or details pertaining to his specific situation. Of course he is Spanish speaking, unable to comprehend the legal terms and content of the Complaint and was just another victim of this scam. The very people this company and these people purport to serve are actually just easy victims because they often do not know who to turn to or understand the complaint procedure of the California State Bar. Once this event took place, it would be an understatement if I said I was shocked. I made a brief comment to Marithza about how crazy the work place was, how borderline their activities were and the very next day I was terminated.

They made some comment about how I wasn't able to handle the load. The reality is that the few paralegals they have that hammer out the complaints have zero legal training whatsoever and simply change names/dates/and dollar amounts and said the same complaint out over and over and over and over.... It is a real shame that they have turned an opportunity to really help people out of a bad situation into an opportuntiy to exploit an underserved and easily scammed segement of the population.  I urge EVERYBODY having any contact with this group to contact the California State Bar Association as I have done and eventually they will have to go knocking. I doubt it would take a State Bar Investigator more than 5 minutes of reviewing their practices and procedures not to mention auditing their trust account and contacting fomer client who received partial refunds to get the doors shut. They have lost the Better Business Bureau scores and there are numerous other complaints online about them.  THEY NEED TO BE STOPPED, DO YOUR PART AND CONTACT THE STATE BAR...