Foreclosures Are Breeding Sophisticated Swindlers

May 11th, 2009 | Tags: Foreclosure

Foreclosures are breeding sophisticated swindlers – those who prey like vultures on the misfortunes of people.
Jim McConville is one of them. A real estate mogul he courted partners for purchasing a massive number of properties. The partners did not have to invest any money – all they had to do was to lend their credit record and identities to get the mortgages sanctioned. McConville convinced his crowd of listeners that he needed more estates than the bank would give to a single person like him. So he needed their assistance.

He promised to make the mortgage payments and also to pay his partners $10,000 for each of the units bought using their names.

In the crowd was 63 year old Jenkins – a woman who had retired from business. She was impressed with Jenkins’ suggestion and invited him to her residence in Orange County to meet her friends. That night Jenkins won over three new names, including Jenkins.

McConville set into motion his operational machinery and got five mortgages sanctioned. With it five condos were purchased in Escondido in March and April 2008.

Four were bought for $337,000 each and one for $370,000. Similar units in that complex were sold for much less.

In reality McConville paid the developer $187,560 for each of the condos. This allowed him to collect $120,000 more for each of the five transactions even after making payments to the developer.

Jenkins and her friends reported that McConville never kept his promise of paying $10,000 for each of the condos as had been agreed upon. That was not the end of the story. After making three mortgage payments on the units Jenkins party had bought and also on those of many other similar name lenders, he quit leaving the official buyers to cope with their ruined credit and its consequences.

Jenkins and her friends stepped up their complaints and this was the key to the investigations that were carried on by voiceofsandiego.org. It led to unearthing of a staggering fraud that had used false or cheated buyers, forged papers and lavish buying prices that has spread across two condo complexes in Escondido and one located in San Marcos.

In 2008 for many months McConville took up a minimum of 81 condo conversions from troubled developers, tailor made their sales to over 20 purchases who lent him their identities. This was discovered after combing through public as well as private records, interviews with the lenders, the developers and former employees of McConville and apart from Jenkins six others of a total of 20 buyers.