Who Would Cheat A Grandma?
Share this story:
We don’t like folks who prey on the elderly, and we’re being asked around the country to investigate these accused scoundrels. It brings us back to Los Angeles to confront those accused of cheating an elderly mother – INCLUDING HER OWN SON.
Watch the previous video ⬇️
We met California lawyer Michael Stoller in the lobby of a fancy L.A. hotel.
Watch him quickly make a beeline for the elevator to escape.
Just ninety seconds before we had asked our first question. Guess it was funny.
Wayne Dolcefino asked, “You’re very popular with the state bars around the country. How come?”
Michael Stoller replied, “what’s with the microphone?”
If that sounded like a nervous laugh, I can understand why.
“I run an investigative firm and we’re investigating your long line of legal trouble with the state bar,” said Dolcefino.
Stoller has been in trouble in at least six states. How does he still have a law license in California?
“I’m an active member in good standing anybody can look it up,” claimed Stoller.
That same record shows Stoller has been in ethics trouble in California too, he lost the right to practice law at least twice.
His office once accused of illegally signing documents. Remember that as we travel the country.
Stoller has been accused of possible mortgage scams in several states.
Colorado, false and misleading advertising.
Illinois, sued by the AG for taking money from desperate folks trying to avoid foreclosure and then not helping them.
In Arizona he was accused of operating a phony government assistance program. Stoller wasn’t licensed in Arizona. The state bar said he used his brother-in-law suspended bar number to try and pull off this racket.
“I see your gentleman over here with the camera and I have no interest in talking to you,” said Stoller.
And that’s right after we asked about this woman, Sara Hart. Our viewers first met her last year.
“Sir I said I have no comment I’m not going to discuss anything with you,” said Stoller.
Sara is too old and sick to fight this battle alone. She now has a court ordered conservator who controls her entire life.
But her son, Guy, is fighting for years now to expose the folks he says took away millions in real estate from him and his mom and got away with it. Including the lawyer, Michael Stoller.
Wayne Dolcefino asked, “What does it say about a system where a lawyer could be in this much trouble in so many states and still be licensed to practice law?”
“It’s absolutely shocking. The judges rely on his honesty and integrity, which he does not have any,” expressed Guy Hart.
But here’s the dilemma. So far, the California courts have so far rejected Guy Hart’s claims that some of the very same people who ripped off other senior citizens were involved in the financial assault on his mom.
“If you’re really interested in Guy Hart, you should take a look at the judgment that was awarded against him,” Stoller said.
Here’s that order from the California second appellate district.
“Guilt by association is not a facet of American law.”
Maybe not, but there is evidence the California courts may have simply gotten it wrong because they didn’t bother to fully investigate.
The FBI wanted the U.S. attorney to consider prosecuting those involved in the case of Sara Hart.
Suspecting that she might be one of many victims of that big California fraudster, Mickey Henschel.
And we think it’s time for the feds to take a second look.
“Tell me about your relationship with Mickey Henschel,” Dolcefino said.
“Good luck,” Stoller said.
“Do you know Mickey Henschel?” Dolcefino asked.
Michael Stoller knows Mickey Henschel very well.
He was his lawyer.
“You know the feds busted him, right? Were you involved with Mickey Henschel? Did you do business with him?” Dolcefino asked.
Henschel is now in federal prison serving a twenty-year sentence for mail fraud, a scheme to con elderly folks out of their homes using fake trusts to get a small piece of a property, then using that to swindle old folks out of the rest.
And a guy named Carlos Velasquez created those fake trusts.
The justice department says he pocketed three quarters of a million dollars in the racket.
And that’s why these documents matter a lot.
These are California trusts created by Carlos Velasquez.
But look at the other name on these trust documents. The co-trustee with convicted Carlos.
His name is Don Hart, Guy’s brother.
Guy has been helping his mom in a seemingly never-ending legal battle over about $10,000,000 worth of family properties they say were stolen in the very same kind of financial scheme that ripped off so many others.
It was the morning after we had confronted Michael Stoller in that hotel lobby.
But Don Hart already knew it happened, called it an ambush.
“Mr. Stoller, you ambushed him,” Don Hart said.
Turns out Michael Stoller has been Don Hart’s lawyer, too, in that legal fight with his own mom.
“He was my lawyer. I’ve never done business with Mickey Henschel. It’s all a lie. What he’s doing is peddling lies,” Don Hart said.
But through a lot of emails, we can show you that Mickey Henschel and Don Hart were talking a lot.
A relationship that actually spans decades, the family says.
Emails show the convicted fraudster was the guy Don was getting advice from on the fight over his mom’s properties.
And when Michael Stoller’s law office updated Don Hart on the family legal fight, look at the email address that was included: caldocservices@hotmail.com.
The FBI said that was Mickey Henschel’s email.
Here’s a Dolcefino consulting flashback.
Check out this lawsuit in 2015.
Sara testifying that Don moved into her house, threatened to throw her out, sometimes entering a state of “craze,” wanting to put her in a mental hospital.
He always wanted “money, money, money.”
“No, that was a lie because I never did,” Don Hart said.
“So your mom was lying?” Asked Dolcefino.
“No. At the time, she was under duress from Guy,” Don Hart answered.
We wish we could talk to Sara Hart, but her conservator ignored our calls.
Family members say he’s unfairly restricted their visits with Sara. It’s a constant complaint we hear in guardianship investigations across the country.
But we can tell you how she lost multi-million dollar properties, including this one on Wilcox.
There is no dispute that a mutual family friend was asked to resolve the family fight over real estate.
The lawsuit between Guy Hart, his mom, and brother, Don.
“And this was a scam, you know? My mom and I believed we’re meeting with a family friend to mediate the dispute with a family member, Don,” said Guy Hart.
But it’s that so called family friend’s decision that is now at the heart of Guy Hart’s ongoing legal fight to prove a conspiracy was hatched to cheat them.
“You just took an oath to tell the truth, do you understand that?” Asked a lawyer.
His name is Sam Pinchassi and you could hear that he’s answering questions through a Hebrew interpreter.
“Can you read and write English fluently?” Asked a lawyer.
“No,” Pinchassi said.
Yet Pinchassi supposedly authored these legal declarations all in English in which he claimed wasn’t just trying to help resolve a family fight, he actually had performed as an arbitrator.
That means whatever he decided was legally binding on the family.
And Pinchassi awarded Don some of the family’s most lucrative properties.
In this email don hart talks about a planned meeting with Sam Pinchassi and Mickey Henschel.
Guy hart believes it was Michael Stoller who manufactured those declarations as part of the organized crime conspiracy to allegedly rip off his mom.
“What about the Pinchassis? Did you do business with the Pinchassis?” Dolcefino asked Stoller.
And you know who eventually took ownership of this Wilcox property?
Look at California deed records.
Something called the Molly P Family Trust out of Arizona.
We got the docs, look!
And this is weird, it’s owned by Sam Pinchassi’s son, that family friend that Guy Hart says sold his mom out for money.
It’s certainly worth looking deeper how the family of the so-called neutral party got such a prize from Don Hart.
“Something is seriously wrong here,” Guy Hart said.
“I’m investigating whether or not you guys were part of a scheme to defraud them,” Dolcefino said.
“Please call counsel. I’m not here to discuss this case,” Eyal Pinchassi said.
We went to the electronics store the Pinchassi’s owned in East L.A., but they’re out of that business now because they’re big in real estate.
The U.S. attorney never sought criminal charges to prove Mickey Henschel also helped engineer the plan to take Sara Hart’s property.
But we can now link conman Henschel, and convicted fraudster Velasquez, directly to the real estate transactions that gave Don Hart ownership of a lot of the Hart family property.
In fact, Velasquez is listed on the title of the home Sara now lives in.
We looked back at the superseding indictment against Mickey Henschel filed by the California U.S. Attorney in March of 2018.
One of the trusts identified in the indictment is called Xcel Enterprise Trust.
Years earlier, Don Hart had granted a small interest in this property, 4548 Topanga Canyon to that very same trust.
The co-trustee? Carlos Velasquez.
Just down the street from 947 Wilcox was another property once owned by the Hart family.
Again, Don Hart created a trust giving away a small percentage of that property to a trust called Rancho Enterprises.
Remember that Mickey Henschel indictment?
There it is: Rancho Enterprises, identified by the U.S. attorney as one of the fraudulent trusts that were controlled by Mickey Henschel.
“You never did any business with Mickey Henschel?” Dolcefino asked.
“No,” answered Don Hart.
“None?” Dolcefino asked.
“No,” Don Hart said.
But in 2019 when Mickey Henschel was sentenced, Don’s sister, Leemor, challenged Don and Mickey.
In a victim’s statement, she claimed, “Don treats and believes Mickey is God and a magician. He had always been able to make people’s homes vanish in a blink of an eye and that he never got caught. Don betrayed our whole family.”
In this email Don Hart says he’s still awaiting the Mickey money, whatever that means, but it sounds financial to me.
“No doubt in your mind, this was a scam?” Dolcefino asked.
“This was a total scam and the judge participated, facilitated it, was complicit in it,” Myer Sankary answered.
We know long time California lawyer Myer Sankary is trusted.
His low-cost, non-profit mediation company is used by the Los Angeles court system.
And he’s not shy about blaming the courts for buying the B.S. that Don Hart and his friends were peddling.
“And I blame the fucking judge. I’m so angry with him because he would not explore the fact that it violated every principle of arbitration rulings. But the point is, it was elder abuse right on its face. It’s clear elder abuse,” Sankary said.
And Sankary says Sara Hart, she’s just one of so many seniors across the country who have been cheated.
“A lot of times, these elderly people don’t know it’s happening until it’s too late. Things are gone, their bank accounts are emptied, their house is transferred, and then they have to wait three or four or five months after they’re evicted from their home,” Sankary said.
The mediation center is one of seven groups that filed briefs with the appeals court, arguing Sara lost her properties without ever signing a single document agreeing to binding arbitration in the first place.
The appeals court was given a lot of this evidence.
The judges ignored it.
Guy Hart tried to subpoena Carlos Velasquez in his legal fight, but Michael Stoller, the lawyer, told the court that Velasquez was unavailable out, of the country.
But we’ve learned the FBI proved that wasn’t true.
Did Michael Stoller lie to the court?
He’s been proven to be a scammer before.
Elders and seniors are getting scammed across the nation.
Check out this website, protectingourelders.com.
It was created by to get the California legislature to finally act to protect other moms so that they aren’t cheated like Sara Hart believes she was.
“We’re trying to change the laws for other elders that would truly have more protection from people like Michael Stoller, like Mickey Henschel, like the Pinchassis, like the Dons,” Guy Hart said.
When Mickey Henschel pled guilty to wire fraud, a federal prosecutor said he had engaged in “litigation extortion.”
Guy says he and his mom have spent far more than $500,000 trying to fight back in court.
We’ve heard that term a lot in our line of work, using the courts to financially bleed your victims, making it impossible to fight the fraud, the truth be damned.
And remember, his lawyer was Michael Stoller.
“You going in?” Dolcefino asked.
“Well not with you,” Stoller said.
“You don’t want to come down with me?” Dolcefino asked.
“No,” Stoller answered.
“I was going to spell my name for you,” Dolcefino said.
“I have no interest in talking to you,” Stoller said.
Michael Stoller is a veteran attorney.
He’s argued in courts in a lot of states, but we found one court transcript in the Hart case that is very interesting.
Maybe it was just a slip of the tongue, but even though Michael Stoller was representing Don Hart at the time, he said this: “If you award Mickey the ruling.”
Maybe the California judges who’ve ignored Guy Hart for so long should start doing what we did—actually connect the dots.
Mickey Henschel was involved in this real estate case, so was carlos velasquez, two convicted felons, fraudsters.
The lawyer was Michael Stoller, punished in seven states mostly for scamming.
And we know that the family of the guy who decided how to split up the property, they got a big pay day, not from both sides, but just from one: Don Hart.
That property on Wilcox where Guy and I met to chat? It’s now worth several million dollars.
Guy and his mom still have a chance for the justice they seek.
They are pushing three ballot measures to protect seniors in the California legislature.
You can see them on protectingourelders.com.
They’re suing Don Hart, the Pinchassis, Carlos Velasquez, Mickey Henschel, and the lawyer, Michael Stoller.
The next judge should start the case by reading the letter Sara Hart submitted before Mickey Henschel was sent to prison.
“Mickey Henschel managed to recruit my eldest son, Don Hart, into his team of crime, fraud, manipulation, and corruption.
“Why do you keep fighting?” Dolcefino asked.
“Because it’s my mom, and I will fight. She would do the same for me,” Guy Hart said.
Keep up with us on social media:
