Preliminary hearing date to be set
Wesley Fort, the senior pastor of the Hollister Newlife Family
Worship Center Church of God in Christ International, appeared in
Santa Clara Superior Court before Judge Jerome Nadler Jan. 23 on
charges of real estate fraud. The appearance to set a date for the
preliminary examination hearing was continued to Jan. 30.
Fort was arrested on March 21, 2008, and then released on
$100,000 bail. He was charged with 13 felony counts of real estate
fraud.
Preliminary hearing date to be set
Wesley Fort, the senior pastor of the Hollister Newlife Family Worship Center Church of God in Christ International, appeared in Santa Clara Superior Court before Judge Jerome Nadler Jan. 23 on charges of real estate fraud. The appearance to set a date for the preliminary examination hearing was continued to Jan. 30.
Fort was arrested on March 21, 2008, and then released on $100,000 bail. He was charged with 13 felony counts of real estate fraud.
The fraud charges are for obtaining money or property under false pretenses, grand theft of personal property and forgery and relate to three properties in Santa Clara County.
Yvonne Landa of Milpitas and Gerald Finney of San Jose, filed complaints with the Real Estate Fraud Unit in the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office in which they allege that Fort came to their homes and offered them help to keep their homes out of foreclosure.
“Wesley Fort knocked on my door offering to help keep my home,” Finney wrote in his complaint form. “I agreed to pay $4,000 p/month for one year while my credit was repaired.”
Fort allegedly convinced the parties to sign the homes over to his name with a promise that he would return the homes in a year after their credit was repaired.
Finney’s monthly payments to Fort were $4,000. He became concerned when more than a year had passed, and Fort allegedly told him it was taking a lot longer to repair Finney’s credit than expected.
“I have a daughter in school with friends she’s grown up with and I have continued to work on the house believing I was going to get it back,” Finney wrote in his complaint. “… I don’t want anything for free, just a chance to get a new loan so I can at least leave my girl a home to live in.”
In San Benito County, Hollister resident Angie Painter refinanced her home through the New Century Title Co. in Campbell in 2006. A while later, she received a call from an FBI agent who asked if she knew Wesley Fort. Fort’s name was on the deed of her home. Painter alleges that Fort was in on a scam with the mortgage broker and escrow officer at New Century Title Co., and that they removed her and her husband’s name from the documents after they left the title office and replaced them with Fort’s name.
No charges have been brought against Fort in San Benito County.
During the summer, Fort and his wife, Mary Bains-Fort, also a pastor for Newlife Family Worship, worked with Mary’s brother, Dante Bains, to offer transitional housing at the old Hazel Hawkins building on Monterey Street. The building, owned by Bains, is not zoned for residential as reported in the Pinnacle Sept. 19 of last year. In addition, one resident was charged up to $750 a month for rent and alleges she was encouraged to commit fraud by taking out a business license so that city staff would think the space was being used for commercial purposes.
