People v. Martinez

When Ruth Michiel experienced financial difficulties, Paul Martinez (defendant) offered to help her avoid foreclosure of her two houses. Michiel and Martinez’s ex-girlfriend testified that Martinez presented Michiel with a stack of documents and claimed that Michiel needed to sign the documents so that Martinez could help her file for bankruptcy. Martinez assured Michiel not to worry and that she would not lose her property. Unbeknownst to Michiel, these documents conveyed a trust deed to one of Michiel’s houses to Martinez. On the same day that the trust deed was recorded, a grant deed conveying Michiel’s other house to Martinez was also recorded, and Martinez began to rent that other house. When Michiel tried to sell one house to her stepdaughter, she discovered that the trust deed had been conveyed to Martinez, purportedly to secure a $25,000 debt to Martinez. Martinez conceded that Michiel did not owe him any money, stated that he had no idea how he came to possess the trust deed but claimed that Michiel had given him the other house that he rented out because it would be foreclosed on anyway. Martinez was found guilty of forging the trust deed. Martinez appealed, contending that there was insufficient evidence of forgery because Michiel’s signature was genuine and because he did not affirmatively misrepresent the trust deed that she signed.