California Bankruptcy Lawyer Blog

A woman who concealed property when filing for bankruptcy has been sentenced to five months in prison. Kathy M. Bartels received her sentence last week after pleading guilty to knowing before filing for bankruptcy that she would be receiving property from her deceased father’s estate. She deposited a $20,875 distribution check into her bank account on April 28, 2003, but did not list the inheritance or trust interest when she filed her bankruptcy documents. Less than one month after depositing the check, she lied to a bankruptcy trustee while under oath, denying that she was going to receive any inheritance during the next six months. In August 2003, she received a $42,872 check—the life insurance payout from her father’s death. She deposited that money into another account.

Bartels has now admitted to withholding the information from the trustee on purpose. She says that she knew that she needed to disclose information about any inheritances she had received within the six months of filing for bankruptcy. She is being ordered to pay $40,497 in restitution and serve three years of supervised release after she serves her prison term.

The United States Department of Justice says that 10% of all bankruptcy petitions have some element of fraud. When filing for bankruptcy, all debtors are supposed to fully disclose all assets and liabilities. Unfortunately, however, not everyone does this, and the concealment of assets or lying during a bankruptcy proceeding is a cause of most bankruptcy fraud cases. When a debtor does not list all of his or her assets on a bankruptcy schedule, the crimes of false statement and concealment are committed.

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The bankruptcy fraud conviction of John Milwitt, a California man who pretended to be an attorney and stole money from a number of tenants who were about to be evicted, has been reversed by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. According to the panel, in a 2-1 ruling, even though prosecutors proved that Milwitt deliberately tried to defraud the renters, they were unable to prove that he intentionally defrauded the landlords, which is what he is charged with in the indictment.

Milwitt published a deceptive ad in a phone book, saying that he was with a company named “AP Assistance.” The advertisement attracted the attention of a number of tenants who needed help to defend themselves from unlawful detainer actions. According to witnesses, Milwitt convinced the tenants that he was a lawyer—even though he had never gone to law school—and he told the renters that they were legally allowed to withhold their rent from the landlords. The tenants paid him fees, in exchange for him appearing in court on their behalf. Milwitt would then list them in court documents has having appeared in pro per. He did not represent any of them in court, which led to default judgments in favor of the landlords. Milwhitt had given a mailbox at a public mail service as an address, and this made it impossible for the tenants to immediately find out that he had not appeared in court for them. He filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection for six of the renters—all of them claim that they did not know or even authorize the petitions, which named the six tenants’ landlords as creditors. Because of the petitions, automatic stays were immediately enacted. This prevented the landlords from collecting the rent owed to them.

Milwhitt, Under 18 U.S.C. Sec 157, was indicted on six counts of bankruptcy fraud. According to the indictment, "he fraudulently obstructed the creditors’ legal right to collect back rents, and repossess the properties” by filing the fake petitions. He was found guilty of five of those counts by a jury.

The Ninth Circuit overturned the conviction, saying that the specific intent to defraud the victim or victims—in this case, the landlords—was not identifiable.

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A California woman has pleaded guilty to bankruptcy fraud after filing 13 bankruptcies from July 1999 to January 2006. Martha Montoya, a Sacramento resident, sought bankruptcy protection so that she could delay the payments of past due rents and continue living in rental homes for free.

Prosecutors say that she took advantage of the Bankruptcy Code’s automatic stay provisions after her landlords acquired judgments against her for rents owed. The landlords had also won the right to evict her family. Because she was under bankruptcy protection, however, the landlords could not collect the past due rents, evict her, or execute the judgments.

When an individual or a company files for bankruptcy, an automatic stay stops actions against you filed by many creditors, including Nolo.com):

· Utility disconnections. If you're behind on a utility bill and the company is threatening to disconnect your water, electric, gas, or telephone service, the automatic stay will prevent the disconnection for at least 20 days. (Also, bankruptcy will probably discharge the past due debts for utility service.) Although the amount of a utility bill itself rarely justifies a bankruptcy filing, preventing electrical service cutoff in January in New England might be justification enough.

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