The plaintiffs Michael A. Gasio (age 72) and Yulia S. Gasio (age 42), together with named co-occupant Tetyana Zvyagintseva (age 65+, limited English proficiency, identified at ¶1.B of both executed leases), occupied the residential premises at 19235 Brynn Court, Huntington Beach, California 92648 from May 1, 2022 through August 5, 2024. The property is owned of record by Phat L.K. Tran, D.M.D. (NPI #1184847162), through whose California real-estate-licensee daughter Anna Tran Ly (DRE Broker License #01894348, Sun Realty and Management DBA expired February 24, 2015) the tenancy was listed and managed. On July 3, 2024 attorney Steven D. Silverstein (California State Bar #86466), principal of Silverstein Eviction Law of 14351 Red Hill Avenue, Suite G, Tustin, filed a Limited Civil Unlawful Detainer action, OCSC Case No. 30-2024-01410991-CL-UD-CJC, in Department C61 before Commissioner Carmen D. Snuggs-Spraggins. The matter proceeded to trial on January 27, 2025, with the plaintiff appearing pro se after the withdrawal of his counsel of record on Friday January 10, 2025 — three calendar days before the noticed Monday January 13, 2025 trial date.

The tenancy generated sixteen documented Wells Fargo wire transfers from plaintiffs’ Premier Checking ending ...0732, beneficiary PHAT L TRAN, recipient Wells Fargo account ending ...9166 (account number 1005959166 per the bank’s separate transfer record). Fifteen wires at $5,000.00 each from January 23, 2023 through April 19, 2024, with Wells Fargo confirmation numbers OW00002882515680 through OW00004382456864. The final wire of $5,350.00 was sent June 28, 2024 — seven days after the Three-Day Notice was served — with confirmation OW00004652829145 and a wire memo recording the plaintiff’s contemporaneous protest at being directed off-contract: “Unknown Contract for July payment 27 of 37 on contracts.” The same Wells Fargo account number 1005959166 appears, by primary-document continuity, in four independent instruments: the April 23, 2022 Anna Ly email proposing the revised 2022 lease; the April 26, 2022 first wire confirmation; the June 21, 2024 Three-Day Notice as the demanded payee; and the June 28, 2024 off-contract wire. Twenty-six months of continuous use as the owner-designated rent-receiving account. The April 26, 2024 executed lease, by contrast, directs rent to a different Wells Fargo account — account ending in a different number, in the personal name of the listing licensee Hanson Le (DRE Broker License #01358448). Four payment channels exist in the documentary record. Channels 1 and 4 point to the owner’s account ending ...9166. Channels 2 and 3 point to accounts in the broker’s personal name. The owner’s own June 22, 2024 written admission — “Sorry I did nt know you did pay your rent to the Hanson account” — records that at the moment of Three-Day Notice service the owner had received neither the funds nor an accounting from the broker. California Business and Professions Code §10145 requires that funds received by a real-estate licensee on behalf of another be placed into a broker trust account established for that purpose, and not into a personal account.

The Three-Day Notice to Pay Rent or Quit served on June 21, 2024 was originated by DocuSign envelope identifying Anna Tran Ly as both creator and sender per the platform’s own metadata. The Notice bears no attorney signature line and was not transmitted through a law office. The plaintiff’s licensee daughter is not the broker of record for the subject property. Counsel of record Steven D. Silverstein maintains a publicly accessible forms library on his firm’s website at stevendsilverstein.com — preserved by Internet Archive Wayback Machine on May 2, 2026 and supplemented May 3, 2026 — which contains a commercial Three-Day Notice template, a Move-Out Clearance Report template, a Declaration of Service of Notice template, and an Evictions Procedures for Unlawful Detainers procedural guide. The published library does not contain a residential Three-Day Notice template. The served Notice in this matter mirrors the published commercial template across three structural loops (opening boilerplate, forfeiture clause, payee directive shell) and departs from the published commercial template across five crafted fields that govern facial validity (payee field substituted from individual to bank, service-and-expiration paragraph deleted, “OR QUIT” disposition language dropped, no signature affixed, landlord contact replaced with bank-branch contact). The Notice directs payment to Wells Fargo account #1005959166 — a personal account in the owner’s name, not the lease-designated broker account in Hanson Le’s name. The strict-compliance framework under Code of Civil Procedure §1161 holds, per the controlling California Court of Appeal cluster, that even minor over-demand voids the notice (Nourafchan v. Miner, 169 Cal.App.3d 746, 763 (1985), $5.96 on rent exceeding $1,000 sufficient), that strict, not substantial, compliance is required (WDT-Winchester v. Nilsson, 27 Cal.App.4th 516, 526 (1994)), and that contractual or business preference of the landlord does not displace the rule (Levitz Furniture v. Wingtip Communications, 86 Cal.App.4th 1035 (2001)). The same strict-compliance pleading question that is here presented was the basis of Attenello v. Basilious, in which the Orange County Appellate Division on September 20, 2022 affirmed dismissal of an unlawful-detainer action without leave to amend, against a plaintiff represented by Steven D. Silverstein, applying Stancil v. Superior Court, 11 Cal.5th 381, 394–395 (2021) — a surviving adjudicated finding on the same question.

On August 5, 2024 the owner Phat L.K. Tran electronically executed a Move-Out Clearance Report on a template distributed by Silverstein Eviction Law. The DocuSign Envelope ID F5D247C2-A1A9-4991-B91F-6A333347A87D printed in the upper-right corner of the executed document appears identically on the blank template hosted publicly on the firm’s website at stevendsilverstein.com. The instrument is the same. Only the field entries differ. The form contains a pre-formatted Attorney Fees deduction line on which the entry $2,005 was made. California Civil Code §1950.5(b) sets out a closed list of four authorized purposes for retention from a residential security deposit: unpaid rent; repair of damage beyond ordinary wear and tear; cleaning; and restoration of personal property where the rental agreement so provides. Attorney fees are not enumerated. Recoverable, if at all, only as costs of suit by a prevailing party under Code of Civil Procedure §1033.5 and Civil Code §1717, on noticed motion to a court — not by the landlord’s own pen on a move-out form. Civil Code §1950.5(l) provides that bad-faith retention of a security deposit may subject the landlord to statutory damages of up to twice the amount of the security, in addition to actual damages. The total deposit credits at issue are $6,375 ($5,000 security + $1,375 other [keys + pet]). Statutory exposure ceiling under §1950.5(l): $12,750 plus actual damages. A separate single-document accounting contradiction exists on the face of the same form: the date column recites “Rent Paid Through: 5/1/2024” while the dollar column demands $10,833 — an amount that mathematically represents only 2.166 months ($10,833 ÷ $5,000) plus the August 1–5 prorate. The five-thousand-dollar gap between the form’s required and demanded figures is, to the cent, one month of rent. The bank record establishes that month — May 2024 — was paid by wire on April 19, 2024 (confirmation OW00004382456864, $5,000.00) and acknowledged by the owner in writing the same day at 11:53 AM Pacific time.

The Under Submission Ruling of March 27, 2025 (Document ID 74522578, Department C61) records on its own face three internal arithmetic discrepancies totaling approximately $1,893 (a $180 components-to-subtotal discrepancy, a $1,000 subtotal-to-principal discrepancy, and approximately $713 of embedded rate inflation from computing rent components at the $5,350 rate notwithstanding the April 19, 2024 wire-memo modification at $5,000). The exhibit catalog on the face of that same order records zero plaintiff exhibits catalogued. Defendant exhibits admitted: seven (J, K, L, M, N, O, Q). Defendant exhibits marked but not admitted: one (P). The trial record on plaintiff’s case in chief, as reflected in the order’s own exhibit catalog, rests on representations of counsel rather than on plaintiff-offered exhibits. The case sits today in a posture suitable for partner-level review of the available state civil tracks (Cal. Civ. Code §§1567, 1572, 1710, 1717, 1941.1, 1942, 1942.5, 1950.5(b)/(g)/(l), Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §§6068(d), 6128, 7090, 10145, 10176, 10177, 17200), the federal civil tracks (Fair Debt Collection Practices Act 15 U.S.C. §§1692e/f/g, Fair Housing Act 42 U.S.C. §§3604, 3617, 3613, Civil RICO 18 U.S.C. §1964(c)), and the senior-multiplier overlay (Cal. Civ. Code §3345 three-times consumer-transaction damages for parties 65 or older, Welf. & Inst. Code §15657.5 treble damages plus fees for financial elder abuse). Two of the three named occupants — Michael Gasio (72) and Tetyana Zvyagintseva (65+) — trigger the §3345 and §15657.5 enhancements. The criminal preservation tracks at California Penal Code §§115, 118, 132, 134, 470, and at 18 U.S.C. §§1341, 1343, 1344, 1957, 1961–1964 are catalogued for the convenience of the eleven agencies of record — FBI Los Angeles, IC3, USPIS, DOJ Civil Rights, HUD OIG, CFPB, FTC, California DRE, California State Bar Office of Chief Trial Counsel, California Department of Insurance, and the Orange County District Attorney Real Estate Fraud Unit. No finding has been made on any pending matter.