Court
OC Superior Court
There is a way to read this record that requires no inference, no theory of motive, and no testimony beyond the documents the parties themselves produced. It is the plainest reading. It is also the one that survives scrutiny in any forum where the facts are taken seriously.
The plaintiff household paid rent. Continuously. To the account the landlord designated. Through the date of move-out. The landlord received every payment. He retains them today. There was nothing past due when the Three-Day Notice was served, because the cure had already been tendered three weeks earlier. There was nothing past due when the unlawful detainer complaint was filed, because the rent for the month in dispute had been wired a second time, under protest, the same week. There was nothing past due when the family vacated, because they had paid through that month and then left.
What the landlord did was different. He served a Three-Day Notice on a tender already in his hand. He commenced an unlawful detainer action in a three-week filing-to-judgment timeline that affords no realistic discovery to a pro se senior household. He retained the rent the family had paid. He retained the deposits the family had wired in 2022. He kept the second payment the family made in June 2024 under his own off-contract phone demand. And when the family vacated on 31 July 2024, the twenty-one-day statutory clock under Civil Code §1950.5(g) began to run on a return that has not been made to this day.
This is not a complicated record. In plain terms: a continuous payment of rent, an opportunistic eviction filing on a false predicate of nonpayment, and a continuing failure to return the deposits and the second-paid rent. Three pillars carry this page — the payment record is continuous; the damages claimed have no basis on these facts; and the money is still with the landlord.
§ IThe payment record is continuous.
From 1 May 2022 through April 2024, the household wired rent in twenty-four monthly installments of $5,000.00 to Wells Fargo Account #1005959166, the personal account of the landlord Phat L.K. Tran. The wire instructions for that account were provided by predecessor agent Anna Tran Ly on 23 April 2022 at 9:40 AM, in writing, under the landlord's name. The protocol was a two-step verification: $1,000.00 first to confirm the routing; the remaining $10,375.00 once receipt was confirmed. The deposit components — $5,000.00 security, $375.00 keys and garage openers, $1,000.00 pet deposit — were wired into the same account as part of the same protocol. The total move-in funds transferred to the landlord's personal account on or about 23–28 April 2022 were $11,375.00. None of those funds were ever placed in a broker trust account. None of those funds have ever been returned.
For the May 2024 rent, paid in advance during the last week of April 2024, the household tendered $5,000.00 at the prior rate — the payment Mr. Gasio identified in writing to the broker on 25 April 2024 at 11:18 AM in the email "Witches burnt Broom." That email also disclosed the household's financial-capacity position: Barclays Jumbo CD $230,894.36; Wells Fargo accounts aggregating more than $115,000; WellsTrade $814,024.15; Fidelity 403(b) Fresno Unified $512,829.85; FICO 799 Experian, updated 20 April 2024. The household was financially strong, current on rent, and on the documentary record at every relevant date.
For the June 2024 rent under the renewal instrument — the first month at the new $5,350.00 rate — the household tendered a cashier's check, number 0084411044, in the amount of $4,338.48 ($5,350.00 less a Civil Code §1942 self-help repair-and-deduct credit of $1,011.52 for the pre-tenancy dishwasher matter the landlord had previously billed to the household). The check was payable to BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HOMESERVICES CALIFORNIA. The cashier's check was mailed via USPS Signature Confirmation, tracking #9534914882764149935944, together with the executed renewal contract in a single comprehensive tender package — not a check alone, but the executed instrument that gave rise to the obligation and the funds that satisfied it, in the same envelope. The package was delivered to the corporate broker's office at 5848 Edinger Avenue, Huntington Beach, on 30 May 2024, and signed for by the initials "H.H."
Comprehensive Tender · No Possible Misunderstanding
The package eliminated every ambiguity that could otherwise attach to a cashier's check arriving alone at a brokerage office. The basis of the payment, the parties, the property, the obligation, and the application were identified in the same envelope. The corporate office received everything required to process the payment.
For the July 2024 rent — the second month of the renewal instrument — the landlord telephoned the household off-contract and demanded that rent be wired to his personal Wells Fargo Account #1005959166, the same personal account that had received rent for the prior twenty-four months. The household, under that off-contract instruction and under the duress of the eviction process already initiated against them, wired $5,350.00 to the landlord's personal account on 28 June 2024 with the memo line "Unknown Contract July 27 of 37." The rent for July 2024 was paid in full, on time, to the account the landlord himself specified.
The household vacated the premises on 31 July 2024 — the last day of the period covered by the July 2024 rent wire. No holdover. The keys, the two garage door openers, and the mailbox key were subsequently returned through prior counsel; the landlord's §1950.5(f) joint walkthrough was not conducted.
§ IIThe routing changes were not initiated by the household.
The household paid rent to whatever account the landlord and broker directed. The household initiated no routing change. The three routing changes that occurred during the tenancy were each landlord- or broker-initiated.
First routing — the original 2022 instruction by Anna Tran Ly: rent to Mr. Tran's personal Wells Fargo Account #1005959166.
Second routing — the 26 April 2024 renewal-contract instruction by Hanson Tri Le: rent to Mr. Le's personal Wells Fargo Account #3312943297. This appears on the face of the executed instrument at Section 3.D.(2). No rent ever flowed through Mr. Le's personal account. Mr. Le operationally detached from his corporate broker on 13 May 2024 and communicated to the household that no one was replacing him, directing the household to contact the owner. Mr. Le did not subsequently request payment to his personal account. The household, declining to follow direction from a person who had exited the role, sent the comprehensive cure tender to the corporate broker's office at Edinger Avenue, not to Mr. Le's personal account.
Third routing — the June 2024 off-contract telephone instruction by Mr. Tran: rent back to his personal Wells Fargo Account #1005959166. The household complied.
A landlord and broker who direct the household to a personal account, and then direct the household to a different personal account, and then direct the household back to the first personal account, cannot fairly claim that the household failed to pay rent. The household paid rent to every account the landlord and broker designated. The household initiated no routing change. The household made no error.
§ IIIThe Three-Day Notice was served on a tender already in the landlord's possession.
On 21 June 2024 — a Friday evening, twenty-two days after the cure tender package was signed for at the corporate broker's office — a Three-Day Notice to Pay Rent or Quit was taped to the household's front door. The Notice was unsigned. It demanded payment to Wells Fargo Account #1005959166 — a different account from the one the renewal-contract instrument designated at Section 3.D.(2). The Notice named only Mr. Gasio; it did not name the other adult occupants of the premises identified in the lease at paragraph 1.B. The Notice was procedurally defective under Code of Civil Procedure §§1161 and 1162 on its face.
The substantive defect is the more important one. The Notice asserted that rent was unpaid. Twenty-two days earlier, the corporate broker's office had signed for a cashier's check payable to the corporate broker, in the amount the renewal-contract rent provision required after the §1942 repair-and-deduct credit, accompanied by the executed contract that identified the basis of the payment. The Notice was generated on a predicate that the documentary record cannot support.
On the day following the Notice, the landlord himself sent a text to the household stating that the Notice had been generated on the basis of Mr. Le's representation to him that no payment had been received. The landlord's contemporaneous text records four admissions: that the landlord did not know rent had been paid to Mr. Le's account; that Mr. Le had told the landlord the household did not wish to sign the new lease; that Mr. Le had told the landlord no payment had been received; and that the landlord caused the Notice to be sent on the basis of Mr. Le's report. The landlord's own admission, in writing, the day after the Notice, names the predicate as a false representation by his agent.
There is no procedural posture in which a Notice generated on the false report of the landlord's own agent — and pleaded against a tender already in the corporate broker's possession — can stand as the basis for an unlawful detainer action.
§ IVThe second payment was made under duress, and the landlord kept it.
On 28 June 2024 — seven days after the defective Notice and contemporaneous with the landlord's off-contract telephone instruction to redirect payment to his personal account — the household wired $5,350.00 to Wells Fargo Account #1005959166 with the memo line "Unknown Contract July 27 of 37."
The wire was made under duress. The landlord had already initiated the eviction predicate, the cure tender remained unaccounted, and the household's third year of residency was under threat of immediate dispossession. The second payment did not extinguish a debt; it satisfied a demand the landlord made of a household that had already paid the obligation a different way. The landlord received $5,350.00 into his personal account on 28 June 2024. He retains those funds. He has not refunded them. His courtroom representation that he mailed a refund is unsupported by USPS proof of service or by any banking record of a reverse transaction.
The cashier's check tendered on 28 May 2024 remains uncashed. The plaintiff holds it sealed. The Orange County Superior Court Minute Order dated 27 March 2025 acknowledges the tender. The eviction counsel's final trial question was: "Did you cash the check?" The answer was: No.
§ VThe unlawful detainer complaint was filed three days after the second payment.
On 3 July 2024 — five days after the household had wired $5,350.00 to the landlord's personal account in satisfaction of the demand — eviction counsel filed the unlawful detainer complaint in the Orange County Superior Court. The filing-to-judgment timeline for limited civil unlawful detainer matters under California's statutory framework is approximately three weeks. The household was pro se as of 27 January 2025, when prior counsel had effectively withdrawn on three days' notice before trial.
A three-week filing-to-judgment timeline is the procedural advantage that allows an eviction prosecutor to obtain a money judgment against a pro se senior household before discovery is meaningfully possible. That timeline was the vehicle. The predicate was the false Notice. The plaintiff's documentary record — the wire-confirmation list, the cashier's check sealed and uncashed, the comprehensive tender USPS tracking, and the landlord's own contemporaneous admission text — was not rebutted by the eviction prosecutor with documentary counter-evidence. The eviction prosecutor presented no evidence that the cashier's check had been returned. The eviction prosecutor presented no evidence that the second payment had been refunded. The eviction prosecutor presented the landlord's representation that he had mailed a refund and no USPS service evidence in support.
The Orange County Superior Court Minute Order dated 27 March 2025 acknowledges the tender of the 28 May 2024 cashier's check. The court is on the record as having acknowledged the cure tender in the same proceeding in which it entered judgment for the plaintiff-landlord. The discrepancy between the court's acknowledged tender and the resulting judgment is a matter that this case file preserves for appropriate further review.
§ VIThe household vacated 31 July 2024. The §1950.5(g) clock ran on 21 August 2024.
California Civil Code §1950.5(g) requires the landlord, within twenty-one days of termination of a tenancy, to furnish the tenant with an itemized statement of any deposit retained, supporting documentation as required by the section, and the return of any unaccounted balance. The household vacated 31 July 2024. The twenty-one-day deadline was 21 August 2024.
The household returned the premises completely. Mrs. Gasio delivered the front door keys, the two garage door openers, and the mailbox key in person to prior counsel at counsel's Downey office on a single occasion; counsel then forwarded the items to the landlord by USPS mail. The complete set of items the 2022 contract enumerated at paragraph 18 — for which the household paid the $375.00 keys-and-openers deposit at move-in — was returned at or near the date of move-out. No documentary basis exists for any deduction from the keys-and-openers component of the deposit.
On 5 August 2024 — five days after the household had physically vacated — a Move-Out Clearance Report was executed under DocuSign Envelope #F5D247C2 by Anna Tran Ly under Mr. Le's broker oversight. The Report was generated unilaterally, without the household present, without the §1950.5(f) joint walkthrough. California Civil Code §1950.5(f)(1) gives the tenant the right, upon notification of intent to terminate, to request a pre-move-out inspection with an itemized statement of proposed deductions and an opportunity to remedy any identified deficiencies before termination. No such walkthrough was conducted. The household had no opportunity to confirm the return inventory, to confirm the condition of the premises, or to remedy any cited deficiency.
The Report's itemized deductions included a line characterizing the door knob as "damaged to enter" — a framing that implied forced entry by the household. The Orange County Superior Court removed the charge during the proceedings, an on-the-record judicial recognition that the deduction had no basis. The document is therefore on the record as containing at least one fabricated deduction line against the security deposit, directed against a senior tenant household that had paid rent continuously for twenty-seven months, vacated on the last paid day, and returned the keys, the two garage door openers, and the mailbox key through prior counsel.
A photograph of the premises taken on 15 June 2025 — approximately eleven months after move-out — shows two short-term-rental-specific lock installations on the front door: a push-button keyless deadbolt at the top of the door, and a contractor's keysafe lockbox hanging from the door handle. Both devices are standard short-term-rental access infrastructure; the keyless deadbolt permits guest entry by code, and the keysafe holds the physical key for staff or guest retrieval. Neither device serves a long-term residential tenancy. The landlord did not need new locks for tenant turnover; he needed short-term-rental access infrastructure because he was converting the property to the operation that now occupies it. The Move-Out Clearance Report's "door knob damaged to enter" deduction — removed in court — was the cover for that conversion cost, attempted to be shifted onto the senior tenant household's security deposit.
Move-Out Report Deductions · Functional Reading
| Deduction Line | Status | Functional Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| "Door knob damaged to enter" | Removed in court | Cost of Airbnb-specific keyless deadbolt and contractor's keysafe |
| $7,835.00 flooring (18 days post-clearance) | Disputed; post-dates city inspector clearance | Short-term-rental flooring upgrade |
| $2,005.00 attorney fees | Outside §1950.5(b) closed list | Eviction counsel facilitating conversion |
| Household bed not returned | Subject of separate Civ. §1965 inquiry | Possible short-term-rental furnishing |
The deductions on the 5 August 2024 Move-Out Clearance Report were not honest accounting of tenant-caused damage. They are a balance sheet for converting the property into a short-term-rental business, charged against the displaced senior tenant household's security deposit.
Funds Held by the Landlord — Inventory
- 2022 deposits (wired direct to WF #1005959166)$6,375.00
- July 2024 second-paid rent (wired 28 Jun 2024)$5,350.00
- 28 May 2024 cashier's check at corporate broker's office (uncashed)$4,338.48
- Reasonable approximation of damages-claim and deduction excess~$3,936.00
- Total funds held by landlord and his agent≈ $20,000.00
§ VIIThe plaintiffs are senior. WIC §15610.30 applies.
Mr. Gasio is a retired school administrator and former vice principal of the Fresno Unified School District. He served thirty years in California public education. He resides in Huntington Beach. Mrs. Gasio is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles and an adjunct faculty member at California State University, Long Beach.
California Welfare and Institutions Code §15610.30 defines financial abuse of an elder as the taking or retention of real or personal property of an elder for a wrongful use or with intent to defraud, by means of false representation, undue influence, or coercion. The remedy provisions under §15657.5 include treble damages and attorney fees on conduct that meets the statutory standard.
The conduct described in this record — the structured eviction prosecution against a continuous-payment household; the Notice generated on a false report of nonpayment; the three-week unlawful detainer timeline against a pro se senior plaintiff; the retention of deposits beyond the twenty-one-day §1950.5(g) deadline; the inflation of move-out deductions outside the §1950.5(b) closed list; the procurement of a second rent payment under duress without subsequent refund; the documented fabrication of a "door knob damaged to enter" deduction line removed in court; and the cost-shifting structure of the remaining deductions onto short-term-rental conversion infrastructure — falls within the framework Section 15610.30 contemplates. No determination of that question has been made by any tribunal. The framework is identified for the record.
The pattern is not random selection of deductions. The pattern is cost transfer from the landlord's new business venture to the displaced household.
§ VIIIThe question that closes the matter.
The plaintiff household paid rent as agreed for twenty-six months at the prior rate and two months at the renewal rate. The plaintiff household tendered the cure for the disputed month in a comprehensive package — signed contract and cashier's check — to the corporate broker's office, where it was signed for and retained. The plaintiff household paid the disputed month a second time under the landlord's off-contract instruction. The plaintiff household vacated on the last paid day without further dispute over occupancy. The plaintiff household has received no refund of any of the funds tendered.
The owner has received every payment. The owner retains every payment today. There was nothing due when the Notice was served. There was nothing due when the complaint was filed. There has been nothing due at any point in this matter.
The plaintiff has paid as agreed. The plaintiff has vacated. The deposits, the second-paid July rent, and the comprehensive cure tender remain with the owner or his agent. The §1950.5(g) clock ran on 21 August 2024. The owner used the eviction process to convert the premises into a short-term-rental business, and he tried to charge the senior tenant household for the cost of the conversion through fabricated and statutorily impermissible deductions against the deposit.
The question on this record is plain. The plaintiff household asks it without rhetoric.
We paid as agreed. The owner received every payment. The owner retains them today. Why is he still holding our money?
— Michael & Yulia Gasio · Pro Se Plaintiffs · Filed for the Record
Scope & allegation standard. Every factual assertion on this page is drawn from primary documents — executed contracts, bank records, emails, text messages, court filings, USPS tracking records, OC Recorder records — preserved in the case file and referenced by source and date. All characterizations of conduct are allegations. No determination of liability has been made by any court or regulatory body. The page is published for the historical record of a pro se plaintiff household.