Harold Fowler is a very trusting person and he trusted Rick Sullivan, a licensed CA real estate agent in Palm Desert, CA, formerly of California Home Loans and currently employed by Atlantic and Pacific Real Estate.
He defrauded Harold R. Fowler in a real estate transaction by forging his name to several "Demand to Pay Commission" documents. When confronted with his fraud, Sullivan returned $3600.00 which were the only funds Mr. Fowler's representative confronted Sullivan about on that day. After those funds were returned, Sullivan was confronted with the other funds obtained by forgery ($5000.00 COMMINGLED into the buyer's agents funds and almost $30,000 simply stolen) and threated lawsuit to discourage Mr. Fowler's representative from pursuing the return of the rest of the funds. When persued, Sullivan sued Mr. Fowler for defamacation of character and threatened Mr. Fowler's representative. Mr. Fowler counter sued for fraud, breach of fuduciary duty, etc. A 6 year lawsuit ensued with Mr. Fowler obtaining a stipulated judgement in arbitration. The nerve... He admitted the forgery to the arbitrator.
Sullivan also defaulted on promissory notes he owed to Mr. Fowler. Sullivan had used pieces of real property as security. As a California agent, dealing in loans secured by real property, the agent must cause a lien to be placed against the property within 10 days. Sullivan never recorded Mr. Fowler's liens against his property, sold one of the properties without paying Mr. Fowler and refinanced and pumped the cash out of the other property and let it go back to the bank.
The proper complaints were filed with the Department of Real Estate, with the Department of Real Estate refusing to call Sullivan to hearing to answer these charges. There are so many violations of real estate ethics that the DRE should have hung him. They further stated that in order to call Sullivan to hearing that Fowler would have to obtain a judgement against Sullivan for them to take any action. Fowler now has a Stipulated Judgement and is going to file once again with the Department of Real Estate.
Sullivan has since lied on his application and obtained a license as Mortgage Loan Originator. He pumped all of the cash out of the 2 properties he owned and let them go back to the bank. Lacking enough integrity to deal with other peoples mortages to say the least.
Although it is only recently that a mortgage loan originator's license is required, Sullivan has been engaged in mortgage loans for quite some time.in a related incident on the same property, Mr. Fowler has a $15,000 second mortgage. Sullivan convinced Mr. Fowler that a better interest rate could be had, and that there was no prepayment penalty connected to his original loan. The new loan went through costing Mr. Fowler almost $14,000 to pay off the $15,000 second. The is called "loan flipping".
He also approached Mr. Fowler for a $150,000 loan for Larry Chank of The Chank Group. Mr. Chank is a real estate broker and is well versed in real estate and loan procedures. Mr. Fowler made the loan understanding that Mr. Chank would put up titles to vintage autos as security. Both Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Chank knew that unless the titles were signed over to Mr. Fowler, that Mr. Fowler had no real security and that Mr. Chank could simply apply for lost title for any of the autos and borrow from someone else. Mr. Chank filed bankruptcy and wiped out Mr. Fowlers loan. Sullivan and Mr. Chank are still doing business together.
Why Sullivan still has a real estate license, let alone a mortgage loan originators license is beyond me.
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