Posted on 11/18/2007 6:22:45 AM PST by DogByte6RER
From dreams to debt
Investors say they expected to cash in on the hot real estate market when they entrusted money to a company in Murrieta. Instead, many are losing their homes and facing bankruptcy.
03:08 PM PST on Saturday, November 17, 2007
By LESLIE BERKMAN The Press-Enterprise
Video: Anna Richter talks about losing money in the investment scheme
Residents of Copper Canyon in Murrieta watched in astonishment as a group of investors snapped up homes in their middle-income community last year, paying $50,000 to $100,000 more than the sellers wanted.
Today, the front yards are browning, overgrown with weeds. Many of the houses are empty. Owners have put up for-sale signs to lure buyers before the houses are auctioned on the courthouse steps or seized by lenders. Many are in foreclosure.
Such properties, strewn across southwestern Riverside County, are the most visible fallout from a real estate scheme that recruited hundreds of investors in at least six states who wanted to cash in on the hot housing market. Many of those investors instead find themselves facing foreclosure or bankruptcy. Some have lost their family homes.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Riverside County district attorney's office are investigating Pacific Wealth and the men behind it. Investors said they also have been interviewed by agents of the FBI, the Secret Service and the California Department of Corporations, but those agencies declined to explain their role in any probe. No criminal charges have been filed.
Investors who have lost an estimated $200 million in cash and equity have joined in five lawsuits that allege fraud and unfair business practices.
The trust that was a cornerstone of the scheme is broken.
(Excerpt) Read more at pe.com ...
I feel no remorse for those much wealthier than I.
Best thing they can do now is just claim bankruptcy and move on. Hard lessons learned. (Biting and chewing, eggs and baskets, murphy’s law).
A wise man once said, “ Greed in Predictable” The older I get the more I realize this is true. The old saying “ If it is too good to be true it probably is” still rings true.The smart money men say it will probably be two years or more before we get all of the water wrung out of these fake loans, and houses start selling for what they are worth.
“Tsunami” alert.
I think last week it was “fire and brimstone.” Or locusts. Or frogs. Hard to keep up.
Well, when you consider the fact that folks are still signing up with Amway and filling their garages with crap they will never sell, it just shows P.T. Barnum was correct then and is correct now.
Scott Grossman, a lawyer representing Stonewood and Hendrix Montecastro, said investors are responsible for the truthfulness of their mortgage applications and cannot dispose of that responsibility by saying they signed papers with blanks that were filled in by others.
"It is a principle in California law that you cannot accuse someone of defrauding you if you were a willing participant," Grossman said.
Real estate bubbles are one of the worst things that can happen to a modern society, short of catastrophic natural events and total war.
Alan Greenspan encouraged this particular manifestation.
I have to read “Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” this afternoon, as it will be overdue soon.
Not only from the standpoint of articially inflated values, but you can bet your bippy that the Riverside County Assessor's tax rolls have spiked!
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Yep. As one investor said, "I didn't feel comfortable about the lying" when documents grossly inflated her income. Instead of asking questions or backing out, she signed the docs anyway. Many signed docs w/blank areas or lied about living in the newly purchased home in order to get a mortgage easier. 'The cornerstone was greed' is absolutely correct.
I can muster up a bit of sympathy for those who were led on by their church, but not much. Just because someone says they're a Christian doesn't make them so. Obviously illegal practices such as lying about income should have made these people think twice.
The script/talking points used by the perps to con their targets:
http://www.pe.com/reports/2007/wealth/Script.pdf
I like a person who can find the siler lining in the clouds.
Try this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ_qK4g6ntM
There have been similar schemes in other areas and they’ve happened before.
They run-up prices higher than they should have been and it always involves some company that promises to make payments for them.
Aside from the larger-scale ramifications, it gives legitimate real estate investors a bad name.
Again what this effectively does is hurt legitimate homeowners and investors, by making financing more difficult for them as destroying the values of their homes (because the fall in value is probably greater and ends up lower than it would have because of the overinflation in the first place) as well as give legitimate investors a bad name with the general public.
~~Ludwig von Mises
Yes, the article calls them “investors” but I hope the DA calls them co-conspirators.
That was really funny! Thanks for the humor break.
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