Michael J. Schneider was chaged in a 102 count criminal felony complaint alleging Schneider stole over $17,500,000.00 dollars from a group of Santa Cruz, California investors who were led to believe that they were making secured real estate loans through Schneider's company, California Plan, Inc. Bail was set at Ten Million dollars ($10,000,000.00).
Schneider, since 1993, owned and operated, California Plan, Inc. located at 3595 Stevens Creek Road in San Jose. Both Schneider and California Plan, Inc were licensed by the Department of Real Estate as mortgage brokers. Schneider's company specialized in finding private money lenders to make "equity mortgage loans" to borrowers who were in need of money. Schneider's company California Plan, Inc. would also act as the loan servicing agent for the investors that made real estate loans through Schneider.
In the Santa Cruz case, investors discovered that in most instances, Schneider failed, as promised, to secure their loans with validly recorded deeds of trust. Instead, Schneider would provide the investors with phony deeds of trust and just keep the investor's money. The investor's discovered that in the few cases that Schneider actually recorded a deed of trust, he failed to tell the investor when the loan was paid off and instead kept the loan payoff. To keep the investors from discovering his fraudulent acts, Schneider's company would send monthly loan payments to the investors, as if the loans were active and valid.
Investigation uncovered that 71 loan transactions from 1995 through December of 2005 were part of Schneider's scheme. Schneider was previously arrested by Santa Clara, California authorities on May 1, 2006 for similar charges involving investors from Santa Clara county, California. Schneider has been in custody since his arrest in Santa Clara.
Persons who may have invested with Schneider/California Plan are encouraged to contact inspector Kent Schlumbrecht at the District Attorney's Office 831-454-2574.


Rachel Dollar, the editor of Mortgage Fraud Blog is an attorney and Certified Mortgage Banker who handles litigation for lending institutions and secondary market investors.