Roderick Akins, a single dad and ex-Marine, was in shock. When he tried to pay some of his back property taxes, Oakland County clerks told him he no longer owned his home.
He had never been served papers or been to court. But it was no mere clerical error.
Akins, 49, of Madison Heights, quickly learned his house was targeted in what officials are calling a widespread real estate fraud.
It was one more hassle stacked on top of the Gulf War veteran's troubles, including wrists and hands that ache so badly some times he can't work — thanks to injuries from working on the line at General Motors' Lake Orion plant.
"I was trying to figure out how I did not own the property," he said. "There's a lot of cases like this, not just me."
Oakland officials say at least 50 homes are caught up in the operation, throwing ownership records into disarray and violating basic property rights of some individuals and families. "It's theft," said Oakland County Treasurer Andy Meisner.
It works like this: The operators of the scam, often using official-sounding corporate names, find houses so far behind on tax payments that the county is about to serve notice, foreclose and put the property up for public auction.
The operators pay some of the overdue taxes to stop the foreclosure process, even though they don't own the house or know the owner. They place a lien on the property and then file court motions and paperwork to transfer the title. They later try to sell the property for a profit.
Often, no one shows up to oppose the court motions because the legal homeowner has died, walked away from the mortgage or given up and assumed the property would go to a public auction. The operators try to pick abandoned homes, often leaving no one to complain.
But sometimes, they pick the wrong home, one with an unsuspecting owner who's prepared to fight back.
By the merest chance of timing, Akins managed to save his home where he lives with his 15-year-old daughter, JoNaya. He happened to walk into the clerk's office in January when the case brought by Consolidated Brokers' Pool was already moving through the court system. Had he waited just a few weeks, it might have been too late.
With the help of Oakland County Clerk and Register of Deeds Lisa Brown and other officials, Akins fought the court motion, persuading Oakland County Circuit Judge Nanci Grant to rule against Consolidated in a strongly worded ruling.
She wrote, "Consolidated Brokers' Pool LLC accrued NO legal interest in the subject property."
No one charged
It's an old trick that has had a resurgence lately, said Meisner, who called the operation a scam that games the lien process and violates fundamental ownership rights.
"Our system of property rights in this country is a very basic underpinning of our society," he said. "Senior citizens, people with disabilities, some of the more vulnerable are really, really at risk."
Even so, Oakland County prosecutors so far have declined to charge anyone in any of the complicated cases.
Paul Walton, chief deputy in the prosecutors office, said "there is a lot of supposition" that the deals are illegal "but for us to go in to a court of law and prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt, we need proof. We need someone to come in and say, 'I never gave them an interest in the property' or 'this lien isn't valid.' We don't have that."
They have found a few people like Akins who have fought back, but the cases involve long paper trails and multiple ownership claims, potentially confusing for juries.
And no one has been literally thrown out of their home and onto the street.
Oakland officials say they've tracked at least seven houses targeted in this way that were later sold by the operators for prices ranging from $105,000 to $368,000. The seven homes appear to have been abandoned, according to records, and no one has come forward to challenge the sales or new titles.
And the county clerk says those seven new owners, who bought the homes, likely are not at risk because no one has complained and they have clear titles.
Many names
Dave Asmar, an attorney with the Oakland County Corporation Counsel's office, said there are so many different partnership names involved in the deals that it's hard to tell who is spearheading the operation or if one or more groups is involved.
But one name stands out as a key figure — Sherman Pegross, 45, of Detroit, who has been involved in at least 17 of the cases the county has tracked, according to paperwork.
It was a Pegross entity, called Consolidated Broker's Pool, that paid some of Akins' back property taxes, filed a lien and claimed to own his home. Consolidated was in the process of suing when Akins stumbled upon the scheme. Consolidated was one court ruling away from owning the home free and clear.
But Akins showed up in court every time the case was on the docket. He didn't have a lawyer, but he was determined.
Pegross later told the Free Press that Consolidated made a mistake and that Akins' home should never have been involved because it was still occupied.
In several interviews, Pegross — who has served time in federal prison and has a criminal record of arrests and convictions for theft, credit card fraud and other offenses — says he has done nothing wrong and is performing a service by helping distressed homeowners settle debt.
He said the county is upset because it loses out on the revenue from a public sale of tax-foreclosed properties after homeowners default on county property tax debt.
"I didn't foreclose it. I didn't threaten to foreclose it. I didn't tell you that you owed me any money. The treasurer's doing that," he said. "The treasurer also says that he is advocating for Oakland County residents to make sure they are protected. But the treasurer is licking his chops if you don't pay. The treasurer is behind the scenes, going, 'I hope they don't pay, I hope they don't pay.' "
He told the Free Press that he's simply a businessman taking advantage of an opportunity and decided while serving time in prison that he'd operate within the law in future dealings.
He said he's not trying to hide his operation behind official-sounding names and came up with the names, such as Rosenblum & Frankel, after driving around Oakland County and seeing names like that on various buildings. He was looking for "a little bit of prestige," he said.
"I'm just one person. I felt that those names, to an investment company, would look a little bigger than just me. Just all marketing, that's all it is," he said.
"The treasurer likes to make me out to be the monster simply because he doesn't want me to do what I'm doing because sometimes I help myself, sometimes I help the (homeowner). But when I help myself or that person, it means he didn't sell it at auction. He's mad about that."
Others fight back
Over the past several months, Meisner, Brown and other officials have moved to block Pegross' operation.
Not only are legitimate homeowners at risk, but properties are also snapped up before foreclosure and a legal public auction of the property can take place. Taxpayers are potentially hurt because some higher-end homes might fetch much more in an auction than the amount of the back taxes.
Brown said she has trained her clerks not to accept filings such as quitclaim deeds — used to show changes of ownership — if the person proffering a document is not the legitimate owner.
Meisner also has stopped accepting payments from Pegross and his entities for overdue taxes and reinstated some of the houses that Pegross snapped up back onto the county foreclosure and auction list.
And like Akins, other homeowners have fought back.
Last month, Oakland County Circuit Judge Rudy Nichols dismissed the claim by Churchill Funding Group to a home at 28784 Aberdeen, Southfield, after the owner, Leticia Peuntes, resisted the operation. She could not be reached by the Free Press for comment.
In dismissing Churchill's claim, Nichols took the rare step of ordering sanctions of $6,265 against Churchill and its attorney. Pegross told the Free Press that Churchhill is one of his company names.
Others are still fighting. Royal Oak resident Rick Sarate found that a lien had been slapped on his parents' house in Royal Oak. He said he has spent at least two years trying to get it removed, but the tangled nature of the case has delayed a resolution.
"I'm caught between a rock and a hard place," he said, not wanting to provide any details. No one has been charged in his case, and it's unclear who was behind the lien.
Making a gift
The operation is a repeat of one that plagued Wayne County about 10 years ago, when Register of Deeds Bernard Youngblood found more than 300 examples of houses targeted in this way. The county cracked down, cleared up vague ownership claims and ended the operation, Youngblood said.
A couple of cases have turned up in Macomb County lately, but Oakland is furthest along in identifying houses and taking steps to block the operations.
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette issued a strongly worded opinion last year that anyone paying taxes on a property he or she doesn't own is simply making a gift and earns no rights to the property.
Even so, Meisner, the treasurer, and others asked the state Legislature to clarify that gaining titles to properties in this way violates state law.
In a Jan. 13 memo to state legislators, Meisner wrote, "Could Grandma's house be stolen right out from underneath her? Yes, and it could be happening in your district." The memo went on to ask lawmakers to make such activity an explicit violation of both civil and criminal law in Michigan.
"They are stealing homes," said Brown, the Oakland clerk and register of deeds. "They're committing a fraud on the court by the false statements they're making in their pleadings. ... It's criminal activity."
Fighting for his home
As Akins stood in the clerk's office in January, he knew he would fight for his home.
Born in Oklahoma, Akins moved to Michigan when he was 12 when his mother got a job on the line with General Motors in Pontiac. He joined GM, too, in time, then left for the Marine Corps, serving in the first Gulf War.
GM held his job at the Lake Orion plant, but shortly after returning from military service, Akins permanently damaged his wrists working in the plant. He's on disability and works construction as weather and his damaged wrists allow, he said.
"Like right now the weather is so bad my hands will actually hurt," he said last week. "When they hurt, they hurt, but when I can work, I do. I don't want anybody just taking care of me."
In 2011, he found a house in Madison Heights he could afford through the Oakland County tax foreclosure auction, paying $38,500. The next year, his daughter, then just entering her teens and having trouble in school, moved in with him. Soon she was doing much better in school, he said, but the strain on the family budget mounted quickly for a partially disabled single dad without full-time employment.
"I became a single dad," he said. "Trying to raise a daughter on a limited income, everything just fell behind."
He wanted to get caught up, to protect his home and his daughter.
So he went to Oakland County offices in Pontiac in January to make some partial payments on the thousands he owed. He found somebody else beat him to it.
Pegross, through his Consolidated Brokers' Pool entity, had paid $3,346.78 on the overdue property taxes the previous March, filed a lien and shortly afterward a new deed claiming ownership.
Hearing of Akins' distress, Oakland officials including Brown and Meisner told him Pegross was scheduled to be in court seeking a "quiet title," meaning, if approved, a judge declares ownership is legally transferred.
Akins persuaded Judge Grant by successfully arguing that Consolidated had concocted a version of events that simply wasn't true — including a claim that the company had validly served notice to Akins that his home was in jeopardy.
As Akins recalled: "The guy kept saying, 'We served him, we did this, we did that.' I'm like, 'I've never been served anything.'"
Contact John Gallagher: 313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jgallagherfreep.
———
©2015 the Detroit Free Press
Visit the Detroit Free Press at www.freep.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
No comments:
Post a Comment