Audio Case Brief

A narrated summary of the documentary record, prepared for listening. Running time approximately twenty-eight to thirty-two minutes at ordinary reading speeds.

INTROWho is speaking, and why

This is a narrated summary of the documentary record in the matter of Gasio versus Tran and others, Orange County Superior Court case number three zero, two thousand twenty-four, zero one four one zero nine nine one. The speaker is Michael Gasio. Michael Gasio is not an attorney. Michael Gasio is a retired California public school administrator, a former middle school vice principal, a former juvenile corrections worker, and before that a sixteen-year veteran of automotive finance. He spent thirty years in the service of the California public school system before retiring in October of two thousand nineteen.

This record is prepared for review by qualified counsel and by appropriate regulatory and prosecutorial authorities. It is not a civil complaint. It is not a demand for reimbursement. The plaintiffs are not seeking money, and the plaintiffs have never at any point requested money from the defendants through this documentation. The plaintiffs are asking qualified investigators and prosecutors to review the documentary record and to determine whether California and federal law have been complied with by the licensed professionals whose conduct is described.

That framing is unusual enough that it deserves to be stated plainly. Michael Gasio spent a career protecting other people’s children inside the California public school system. Before that, he spent years in juvenile corrections, watching young people cycle through a justice system that rarely served them well. He has spent this portion of his retirement doing for the State of California what he spent his working life doing for the State of California: preserving, organizing, and submitting documentary evidence of conduct that appears to violate public law, so that those with the authority to act on it can decide whether to act.

The matter concerns conduct surrounding a residential tenancy at nineteen thousand two hundred thirty-five Brynn Court, in Huntington Beach, California, between May of two thousand twenty-two and August of two thousand twenty-four. The tenants vacated the property voluntarily on August fifth, two thousand twenty-four, with rent current through the last day of occupancy. No sheriff lockout was executed. No writ of possession was enforced against the tenants. Rent was paid in full, through the last day of tenancy, by electronic wire transfer.

This narration proceeds in three parts. First, a short introduction to the property and the named parties. Second, the documentary record, walked through in the order the events occurred. Third, the federal statutory framework that the record raises, and the closing question the record places before the listener.

AThe property and the parties

The subject property is a single-family residence at nineteen thousand two hundred thirty-five Brynn Court, Huntington Beach, California. The owner is Phat L. K. Tran, a licensed California dentist, whose practice is OC Dental Implant Center at fourteen thousand four hundred eleven Brookhurst Street in Garden Grove. Dr. Tran owns multiple Orange County properties, including his personal residence at twenty thousand twelve Sand Dune Lane in Huntington Beach, estimated value approximately three point eight million dollars. Public recorder records show more than three hundred entries tied to Dr. Tran and entities associated with him.

The two thousand twenty-two listing agent of record was Anna Ly, a California Department of Real Estate licensee, salesperson license number zero one eight nine four three four eight. Anna Ly is the daughter of Dr. Phat Tran. She operated under the name Sun Realty and Management. Ms. Ly also serves as the chief executive officer of AP Silk Arts Incorporated, a corporation for which her father is the registered agent.

The two thousand twenty-four property manager was Hanson Le, a California Department of Real Estate broker associate, license number zero one three five eight four four eight. Mr. Le presented himself as affiliated with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties, the operating name of Springdale Marina Incorporated, Department of Real Estate corporate license number zero one two zero eight six zero six. The Designated Officer of that entity was and is Dennis Allen Rosas.

Counsel of record for the plaintiff landlord in the unlawful detainer action was Steven D. Silverstein, California Bar number eight six four six six, admitted to practice in nineteen seventy-nine. Mr. Silverstein practices from an office in Tustin and publicly describes his firm as specializing in eviction. The tenant plaintiffs are Michael Gasio, retired educator, and Yulia Gasio, California State University Long Beach professor of art. They shared the home during the relevant period with Yulia’s mother, Tatiana, an elderly Ukrainian woman who had survived war and displacement in her own lifetime and who slept on the floor the first night of the tenancy rather than disturb the household.

BThe first day, and the pattern that began there

The plaintiffs moved into the property on May first, two thousand twenty-two. All rent and deposits were paid in full the first night. The listing had promised an ocean view, an in-unit washer and dryer, and all appliances included. None of those amenities existed. There was no ocean view. There was no washer or dryer anywhere on the premises. And on the first day of occupancy, a photograph taken at eleven thirty-nine in the morning documented established black mold colonies under the kitchen sink, consistent with months or years of moisture accumulation from an unpermitted drain modification completed approximately a decade earlier. That mold was photographed, preserved, and never remediated.

When the plaintiffs raised the missing washer and dryer with the listing agent, her response was, and this is the verbatim text: Move out by noon. That exchange set the tone for three years of tenancy.

Within weeks, the property owner called the plaintiff by telephone and changed the payment terms. He demanded that rent be paid into his personal Wells Fargo bank account, not by check as the lease stated, and he demanded it by the twentieth of the preceding month, rather than the first, on the stated reason that he had a personal bill due on the twentieth and did not wish to wait. The plaintiff objected in writing on March twenty-ninth, two thousand twenty-three, stating: You cannot change contract on your own. The owner ignored the objection and continued demanding early payment under threat of a five hundred dollar late fee and credit damage. The plaintiffs complied under duress. California Civil Code section eighteen seventy, subsection five, prohibits enforcement of unconscionable contract modifications. California Civil Code section eight twenty-seven requires written notice for any change in tenancy terms. Neither was provided.

CTwenty-six electronic wires, and one paper check

Over the twenty-six-month tenancy, the plaintiffs made approximately twenty-six consecutive rent payments. Wells Fargo wire transfer records covering the tenancy show that every one of those payments moved electronically by wire transfer with the beneficiary designation in Dr. Phat Tran’s personal name. The destination was not a designated California real estate broker trust account. The destination was not the payment address specified in the executed lease of record. It was an account in the owner’s personal name, held at Wells Fargo Bank, and the transfer was confirmed on each occasion by a wire reference number preserved in the plaintiffs’ bank records.

There was a single exception across the tenancy. One payment, made in May of two thousand twenty-four, was tendered not by wire transfer but by United States Postal Service Certified Mail, in the form of a cashier’s check payable to Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties. That one exception is the payment that did not reach the owner’s account. That one exception is also the payment that would anchor a federal mail fraud inquiry.

DSpring of two thousand twenty-four, and the new payment channel

In the spring of two thousand twenty-four, the plaintiffs communicated their intent to vacate at the end of April. On April second, two thousand twenty-four, the owner wrote to them by text message: Please do not think we’re looking new lessee. That sentence is in the record. Twenty-four days later, the plaintiffs signed a new thirteen-month lease at a rate of five thousand three hundred fifty dollars per month, up from five thousand dollars, and they continued the tenancy.

Three days before that new lease was executed, a new person was introduced into the transaction. On April fifth, a text message arrived from a Hanson Le, stating: Hi Michael! I am Hanson, a new property manager for Phat Tran. Good to connect with you. The next day, April sixth, Mr. Le sent a second message to the plaintiff stating that he was, in his own words, currently traveling in Europe, and will be back in California on April fifteenth. That text message is preserved. It is a written representation by a California licensee regarding his own physical location, during a period that overlapped with the execution of a California residential lease on a California licensee basis. Whether Mr. Le was actually in Europe during that window is a question resolvable in the ordinary course of discovery through United States Customs and Border Protection records, airline manifests, mobile-carrier cell-site data, and credit-card geolocation.

On April twenty-sixth, two thousand twenty-four, the new lease was executed through the Authentisign electronic signature platform, operated by Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. The envelope bore full Berkshire Hathaway corporate branding. It was transmitted from a Berkshire Hathaway corporate email address on Berkshire Hathaway’s licensed platform. All four parties signed. Mr. Le completed his signature at five thirty-six in the afternoon, Pacific Daylight Time, on April twenty-eighth.

Inside the executed lease, a payment clause directed monthly rent payments to a Wells Fargo account held in Hanson Le’s personal name. The clause bore the owner’s initials. California Business and Professions Code section one zero one four five requires that all trust funds received by a real estate licensee be deposited into the broker’s designated trust account, not in a licensee’s personal bank account. Ten California Code of Regulations section two eight three two states the same requirement. The clause, on the face of the executed instrument, directs rent into a private account, outside any broker trust account, outside any BHHS ledger, outside any escrow oversight.

When the plaintiff later contacted the Designated Officer of Berkshire Hathaway’s California entity, Dennis Allen Rosas, and raised the question of Mr. Le’s private-account routing, the verbatim response was: Call Hanson, he is moonlighting. They all do it. No corrective action was taken by the broker of record.

EThe payments the court said did not exist

On April nineteenth, two thousand twenty-four, the plaintiff wired five thousand dollars to start the third year of tenancy. The Wells Fargo wire confirmation is preserved in the case file. The memo line on that wire reads, verbatim: New lease twenty-four, one payment at five thousand. That payment would later be denied, under oath, in open court.

On May thirteenth, two thousand twenty-four, an event occurred in the California Department of Real Estate’s public licensee record. Hanson Le’s personal broker-associate license detached from Springdale Marina Incorporated. From that moment forward, Mr. Le no longer had corporate-brokerage authority tied to the Authentisign contract the plaintiff had signed, because the contract named Springdale Marina Incorporated as brokerage of record. Mr. Le did not leave the real estate industry. He migrated his personal license to another corporate broker supervised by the same Designated Officer, Dennis Allen Rosas.

Fifteen days later, on May twenty-eighth, the plaintiff tendered the month’s rent, net of a documented repair-and-deduct adjustment for a replacement dishwasher, by cashier’s check sent United States Postal Service Certified Mail to the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices office at fifty-eight forty-eight Edinger Avenue, Huntington Beach. The tracking number is preserved in the case file. The check was payable to BHHS. The USPS signature on delivery, two days later, was the letter H, followed by a period. The check was never deposited. The check was never returned. The check sits sealed in the plaintiff’s custody to this day, preserved for latent fingerprint analysis should a criminal case be opened.

Three days after the check was delivered, the property owner texted the plaintiff: Sorry I did not know you paid your rent to the Hanson account, I just texted him to find out. Two days after that, a second message arrived from the same owner: Hanson has the check. Both messages were preserved, and the second was admitted into evidence at trial on February sixth, two thousand twenty-five.

On June first, two thousand twenty-four, nineteen days after the license detachment and two days after the check was delivered, a new business entity called Hanson And Tony LLC was filed with the California Secretary of State. The chief executive officer of record on that filing is Hanson Le.

When the Huntington Beach Police Department asked Mr. Le about the whereabouts of the cashier’s check, Mr. Le invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

FThe three-day notice, and the ten-thousand-seven-hundred-dollar extraction

On June twenty-first, two thousand twenty-four, a Three-Day Notice to Pay Rent or Quit was served on the plaintiffs. It bore the typed name Phat L. K. Tran. It contained no handwritten signature, no electronic signature notation, and no attorney signature block. It was taped to the door in a single envelope addressed only to one of three tenants, one of whom was out of the country at the time, the other missing on the notice was Yulia mother who was on on the contract signed only a month before eviction as a resident and nonEnglish speaker. It demanded a second June payment to a Wells Fargo account number that was not the payment account specified in the executed lease after the contracted agent had recived the funds the month earler on May 30th for June at Berkshire Hathaway California Homes. California Code of Civil Procedure section eleven sixty-one and eleven sixty-two require specific form and service for a lawful three-day notice. The June twenty-first notice, on its face, failed to satisfy those requirements.

That same evening, the plaintiff received a telephone call from the property owner. The verbatim demand was: Put the money in my bank account like you always have, or I’ll kick you out. The plaintiff offered three lawful alternatives to resolve the missing May cashier’s check. Each was refused. Under threat of loss of home, the plaintiff paid again, into a personal account, outside the contract, without credit to the rent ledger for June.

The mechanism by which the second payment was extracted is the single most important fact in this case file for the attorney of record. In order to extract payment after it had already been tendered, counsel of record personally signed an instrument requiring the plaintiff to remit a second rent payment of ten thousand seven hundred dollars, from personal savings, into the client’s personal checking account. The instrument required counsel and client to co-sign acknowledging that the tenant disputed the propriety of the second payment and that no prior repayment had been made. Counsel’s own signature on that instrument is, on its face, a written acknowledgment that at the moment of signing, counsel knew the tenant disputed the predicate debt. California Penal Code section four eighty-four and four eighty-seven, when read together, define grand theft by false pretenses. Ten thousand seven hundred dollars exceeds the felony threshold under section four eighty-seven by more than eleven times. California Penal Code section five eighteen defines extortion as the obtaining of property through wrongful use of fear. California Business and Professions Code section six thousand one hundred twenty-eight defines attorney deceit. The signed instrument engages each of those provisions on its own face, independent of any courtroom testimony.

GEleven days before trial

The trial was set for January twenty-seventh, two thousand twenty-five. On January sixteenth, two thousand twenty-five, at one forty in the afternoon, Michael Gasio transmitted a single email through Yahoo Mail. The email was addressed to seven named recipients. It went to Dr. Phat Tran. It went to two third-party witnesses. It went to Yulia Gasio as co-complainant. It went to Hanson Le at the Berkshire Hathaway address. It went to Anna Ly at Sun Realty. And it went to Steven D. Silverstein Esquire, at his practice email address.

That email, eleven days before trial, named the scheme. It named the cashier’s check. It named the Hanson Le account routing. It named the double payment extracted under protest. It named the twenty-six-plus prior payments. It named Anna Ly’s role in the two thousand twenty-two lease formation. It warned every recipient, in a single explicit sentence: Do not perjure yourself regarding what you have done with those two real estate agents. And it stated what the plaintiff was asking: resolution outside court, or prosecution.

No recipient corrected a single fact. No recipient sent a rebuttal. No mail was returned. Every recipient continued their role in the scheduled proceeding.

Federal conspiracy under Title eighteen, United States Code, section three seventy-one requires: first, an agreement between two or more persons; second, to commit a federal offense; third, at least one overt act in furtherance. The documentary significance of the January sixteenth letter is this: every participant in the subsequent proceeding received, on a single common date, written notice of the scheme, the evidence, and the warning. Every act that followed was an act taken with that notice in hand. Under the United States Supreme Court’s holding in Global-Tech Appliances versus SEB, a defendant who subjectively believes there is a high probability that a fact exists and who takes deliberate actions to avoid learning of that fact is treated, for federal criminal purposes, as having actual knowledge. The January sixteenth letter forecloses that avoidance defense.

HThe attorney who withdrew three days before trial

The plaintiff had retained defense counsel. In June of two thousand twenty-four, Richard Joseph Rosiak Esquire, California Bar number one four one four three zero, accepted an eight-thousand-dollar retainer to represent the plaintiff at trial. The retainer was paid in full at engagement.

On July eighteenth, two thousand twenty-four, the plaintiff transmitted a written email to Mr. Rosiak at five twenty-seven in the afternoon, with a named professional third-party witness copied. That email formally transferred communication authority over the matter to Yulia Gasio, identifying the plaintiff’s cardiac condition, naming the treating facility, and identifying the medication by adverse effect. The email is preserved.

No substantive filing by Mr. Rosiak appears on the court docket in the months that followed. No discovery was propounded. No motion was filed. The two thousand twenty-two lease’s three-signatory structure was not placed before the court. The Certified Mail receipt for the May tender was not presented. The electronic payment ledger was not introduced.

On Friday, January tenth, two thousand twenty-five, a withdrawal letter from Mr. Rosiak arrived in the plaintiff’s mailbox. The set trial date was the following Monday, January thirteenth. Three calendar days, with a weekend intervening. The plaintiff, seventy-two years old and on a continuous cardiac monitor, appeared in court without counsel. The matter remained in proceedings through April of that year. From January through April, the plaintiff represented himself.

The California State Bar Enforcement Division has opened a formal review of this representation. Examiner Devin Urbany has been assigned. No finding has been made on the record at this time.

IThe trial, and the three-witness contradiction

At trial on January twenty-seventh, two thousand twenty-five, the owner testified, under oath, that rent for the disputed month had not been received. The closing argument by counsel of record described the cashier’s check as having been returned by mail.

The record-based rebuttal of that testimony, before that testimony was given, rested on three independent record systems, none of them controlled by the plaintiff.

First, the United States Postal Service certified-mail tracking record. The USPS database shows the envelope postmarked and in transit. No return-to-sender scan appears in the database, at any point, ever. USPS business records are admissible under Federal Rule of Evidence eight zero three and California Evidence Code section twelve seventy-one. They establish, on their face, that no return event occurred.

Second, Wells Fargo banking records, which establish on the face of the records how the funds moved and where they arrived.

Third, a text message from the property owner to the plaintiff, introduced into evidence and admitted at trial on February sixth, two thousand twenty-five, in which the owner states, in his own words: Hanson has the check. That is a principal’s admission against interest that the check was received and directed to the agent.

In open court, when shown the Hanson has the check text, the judge asked the owner directly: Did you write this? The owner answered, under oath: Yes. In the same proceeding, the same witness also testified, under oath, that no rent payment had been received. Both statements appear in the transcript. Both cannot be true. California Penal Code section one eighteen defines perjury as a willful false statement under oath on a material matter. The transcript of the January twenty-seventh proceeding resolves the question of whether that element is present.

JAfter the eviction: the Airbnb, the invoice, and the bunk bed

The plaintiffs vacated the property voluntarily on August fifth, two thousand twenty-four. Within weeks, the property appeared on Airbnb under the host name Vui, a seven-year host managing multiple Huntington Beach short-term rentals, at a monthly rate of seven thousand seven hundred eighty-six dollars. That is a fifty-five percent increase over the rate the plaintiffs had been paying, on a property they had vacated with no damage, no unpaid rent, and no sheriff action.

The interior photographs on the Airbnb listing show vinyl plank flooring throughout, new baseboards, and a renovated kitchen aesthetic. The property had been converted for short-term rental use.

Separately, on August twenty-second, two thousand twenty-four, Anna Ly transmitted a move-out clearance report to the plaintiff, from the email server of Phat Tran D.M.D. Incorporated, her father’s dental practice in Garden Grove. That date is five hundred twenty-five days after she had stated in writing that she no longer worked for her father. The report claimed twenty thousand nine hundred eighty dollars in damages. The largest line item was seven thousand eight hundred thirty-five dollars for carpet replacement, with the stated justification: Replace carpet due to dog pee bad smell. The animals on the premises had been permitted in writing, by two successive signed pet addenda, on two successive leases, including one signed by the owner himself. The Airbnb photographs show no carpet anywhere in the home. The property is finished in vinyl plank flooring.

The arithmetic is independent of any dispute about the animals. Market rate for the carpet specified on the LY Construction invoice, at Home Depot at the time of the invoice, was approximately eighty-eight cents per square foot. For the approximately nine hundred fifty square foot area in question, the market cost of replacement would have been approximately eight hundred thirty-six dollars. The invoice charged seven thousand eight hundred thirty-five dollars. The markup is greater than nine hundred percent. No carpet was replaced.

Finally, during the active tenancy, in June of two thousand twenty-four, a person associated with the owner removed the plaintiff’s bunk bed frame from the property. The frame was never placed in storage. The frame was never returned. California Penal Code section four eighty-seven defines grand theft at a property-value threshold that the bunk bed exceeded.

KThe federal statutory framework

The documentary record engages a set of federal criminal statutes that deserve to be stated plainly at the close of this brief, because those statutes are the frame through which a federal prosecutor would ordinarily evaluate what the record shows.

Title eighteen, United States Code, section thirteen forty-three: wire fraud. Every interstate electronic transmission in furtherance of a scheme to defraud is a separately countable offense. The statutory maximum is twenty years per count, or thirty years per count where a financial institution is affected. The statute of limitations is five years, extended to ten years where a financial institution nexus is present. The Authentisign lease execution on April twenty-sixth, two thousand twenty-four, transmitted through interstate servers on the Berkshire Hathaway corporate platform, with a payment clause routing client funds into a non-trust account, is a wire transmission. Each subsequent wire transmission in support of the same scheme is a separately countable anchor.

Title eighteen, United States Code, section thirteen forty-one: mail fraud. Each United States Postal Service transmission in furtherance of a scheme to defraud is a separately countable offense. The May twenty-eighth Certified Mail cashier’s check, delivered to the broker of record, signed for, not credited, not returned, is a mail fraud anchor on the face of the record.

Title eighteen, United States Code, section thirteen forty-four: bank fraud. Holding an electronic deposit past the three-business-day banking rule and then claiming that the instrument was returned by untracked ordinary mail, while the electronic funds remained in the account, is a banking event that section thirteen forty-four is designed to reach.

Title eighteen, United States Code, section thirteen forty-nine: conspiracy to commit wire or mail fraud. The January sixteenth letter, transmitted to seven named recipients including two attorneys of record, eleven days before the trial at which every named recipient continued their role, supplies the common-notice anchor from which a conspiracy charge ordinarily proceeds.

Title eighteen, United States Code, section nineteen sixty-two, subsection C: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The record reflects two documented unlawful detainer cycles involving the same Huntington Beach property corridor, represented by the same counsel of record, within a six-year period. Counsel of record for the owner in this matter, Steven D. Silverstein, also represented the owner’s daughter in a two thousand eighteen residential unlawful detainer action in the same court. The predicate-act requirement under section nineteen sixty-one, subsection five, is satisfied by two predicate acts within a ten-year window.

Title eighteen, United States Code, section nineteen sixty-four, subsection C: the civil RICO remedy, which provides for treble damages and attorney fees for prevailing plaintiffs. That remedy is available to qualified counsel; it is noted here only to complete the statutory landscape and is not itself the purpose of this narration.

California Penal Code section one eighteen: perjury. The transcript of the January twenty-seventh trial, together with the Hanson has the check text admitted in the same proceeding, resolves the element of willful falsity on a material matter.

California Penal Code section one twenty-seven: subornation of perjury. This is the statute under which an attorney who procures perjured testimony with knowledge of its falsity may be prosecuted. The knowledge element is supplied by the documented pre-trial notice pattern, which this brief has already summarized.

California Business and Professions Code section one zero one four five: the broker trust-account requirement. The initialed payment clause directing rent to a personal account, on the face of the executed lease, is a documentary anchor for this provision.

California Penal Code section five eighteen: extortion. The ten-thousand-seven-hundred-dollar under-protest extraction, on an instrument personally signed by counsel of record, is a documentary anchor for this provision.

California Welfare and Institutions Code section fifteen six ten point thirty: elder financial abuse. The plaintiff is over sixty-five. The cardiac condition and its documentation predate the conduct at issue. The statute applies.

Each of these statutes, standing alone, is a frame within which documentary evidence already in the record could be evaluated. Taken together, they describe the federal and state picture that a competent prosecutor would see on first reading.

CLOSEWhat the record asks