{"id":150619,"date":"2026-03-03T04:24:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T04:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/150619\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T04:24:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T04:24:27","slug":"woman-accused-of-filing-fraudulent-multimillion-dollar-liens-appears-in-la-court-pleads-not-guilty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/150619\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman accused of filing fraudulent multimillion-dollar liens appears in LA court, pleads not guilty"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Rita Ortiz, the woman dubbed the “Lien Queen,”<\/a> pleaded not guilty Monday after being charged with 25 counts of filing a false document.<\/p>\n

Her arraignment comes after weeks of reporting from the 7 On Your Side Investigates team on massive multimillion-dollar liens<\/a> she hit against homeowners in Southern California.<\/p>\n

But on Monday, we learned from prosecutors that their concerns extend beyond just those liens.<\/p>\n

In the courtroom we saw Ortiz behind Plexiglass, as prosecutors called her both a “financial” and a “physical” threat to the public.<\/p>\n

They say Ortiz has been trying to break into a home where a family with a small child is living.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors say that family is now afraid every day to be in their own home.<\/p>\n

The district attorney’s office also told the court that right after Ortiz was evicted from a home two weeks ago where prosecutors say she was “squatting,” she filed a deed claiming that property was hers.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors say that further clouded the title of the rightful owner.<\/p>\n

L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman spoke about this case when he spoke on Eyewitness News Monday.<\/p>\n

“This individual went ahead and filed a whole variety of these liens, multimillion-dollar liens that we will prove in court are false and she will now be held criminally responsible for them – looking potentially going to state prison as a result,” Hochman said.<\/p>\n

All of this comes after we shared the stories of homeowners in the Beverly Hills area who say Ortiz slapped them with $24 million liens for unpaid cleaning and consulting work.<\/p>\n

Those owners say they never hired Ortiz to do any work.<\/p>\n

After a prosecutor successfully argued to keep her bond at $700,000, Ortiz responded with, “Everything you are saying is a lie.”<\/p>\n

Her next court date is set for March 12.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Rita Ortiz, the woman dubbed the “Lien Queen,” pleaded not guilty Monday after being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[63010,9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-150619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-63010","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}