Blair Christopher Hanloh was sentenced last week to four years in county jail for forging documents to take over five homes in Anaheim, Dana Point and San Clemente he did not own so he could rent them out to others.
That represented something of a break for the Long Beach 50-year-old, who was looking at a maximum sentence of five years and eight months in state prison following his Oct. 30 conviction on five felony counts of recording false and forged instruments.
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Blair Christopher Hanloh Guilty of Forgery in Case Where He Got Deeds on Homes of Others
The judge ruled Hanloh could not be sentenced to a state prison term due to current prison realignment legislation, so it's off to jail instead, according to an Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA) statement.
The owner and operator of Blair Hanloh Trustee of Diversified Management Trust (Diversified Management) filed false quitclaim deeds on several residential properties–including some still occupied by homeowners–as part of an elaborate scheme to possess and rent out properties valued at more than $3.5 million, the OCDA says.
Banks and homeowners were not only stung but so were those who paid rent to Hanloh for homes he did not own.
The defense claimed, unsuccessfully, that Hanloh did not knowingly file false documents but sought “abandoned” homes, took control of the “distressed” properties through a legal maneuver called adverse possession and then renovated and rented them out as part of his “nuisance abatement” mission around the county.
Someone was certainly a nuisance.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.