Former Santa Clara Councilman Dominic Caserta has been released on $30,000 bail after he was charged in January with forgery and falsifying financial statements on a loan application, prosecutors said.
Caserta posted bail after self-surrendering in San Benito County last Tuesday, according to Santa Clara County Supervising Deputy District Attorney Steven Dal Porto. The warrant for his arrest was issued Feb. 16 and signed by Superior Court Judge Paul Bernal.
He is set to be arraigned on May 13 at the Palo Alto courthouse. Caserta and his lawyer, San Jose-based criminal defense attorney Sam Polverino, could not be reached for comment.
According to court documents, the former councilman forged six Foothill-De Anza Community College paystubs from July 31 to Oct. 31, 2021 in an effort to obtain a loan for $690,000 from Finance of America Mortgage.
Caserta also submitted a false employment verification form for 2021 to the lender where he said the college paid him $81,141.89 as a part-time instructor and forged the signature of a district employee, authorities said.
He has not worked at Foothill College since 2019 and is now a political science lecturer at San Francisco State University.
When investigators contacted him in November, they said Caserta “denied speaking to anyone from Finance of America and reiterated that he had not filled out any Verification of Employment forms,” according to court documents.
Caserta was elected to the council in 2002 and re-elected again in 2006 and 2014. During his 2018 bid for county supervisor, a campaign staffer accused him of making unwanted sexual advances.
Soon after, a leaked personnel file from the Santa Clara Unified School District showed that students had made allegations of sexual harassment against the high school civics teacher dating back to 2002.
In August 2018, the district attorney’s office declined to file charges against Caserta for the alleged sexual misconduct, citing insufficient evidence.