Home buyers duped into foreclosure

South Florida Foreclosure & Investor News

The beige ranch house at 4501 SW 13th Ter. looks much like any other on this ordinary street in the Little Gables neighborhood.

But it's one of a string of homes bought for more than $7 million in suspicious mortgage deals orchestrated by the former co-owner of a South Beach talent agency and her husband. The deals wrecked the credit of at least five people and sent eight homes into foreclosure, one of them twice and another three times.

The story of 4501 SW 13th Ter. comes amid what police call an epidemic of mortgage fraud that spread during South Florida's real estate boom, when the money was easy and the deals flew fast. Florida leads the nation in mortgage fraud, which flourishes because of cracks at every stage of the system, according to a Miami Herald analysis based on hundreds of documents and dozens of interviews.

Here's how it usually works. Small cartels of inside players recruit people with good credit as decoy or straw buyers. They inflate the price of a home to get a bigger loan, sometimes with the help of an appraiser. Then they pay the sellers at their original price, pocket the rest of the money as cash back at closing, and abandon the home to foreclosure.

Florida accounts for 8 percent of all new loans nationwide but almost 18 percent of suspicious ones as measured by lender complaints, according to the Mortgage Asset Research Institute, a mortgage-fraud data clearinghouse.

Two weeks ago, Gov. Charlie Crist signed a bill making mortgage fraud punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

This fraud can skew the entire real estate market. Lenders and investors lose millions of dollars in bad loans. Homeowners in targeted neighborhoods pay higher property taxes because their houses are compared to others with inflated prices. And those whose identities are used end up with their credit in ruin.

John Oral, a straw buyer for 4501 SW 13th Ter., said he fell into a depression and lost almost 20 pounds after discovering he had been duped.

''My credit report means everything to me,'' said Oral, who has since moved from Coral Springs to Central Florida. ``I'm the breadwinner of my family. . . . I'm not eating. I'm just totally distressed.''

The couple who arranged the deals were Dayalin Zayas, 36, and her husband, Marlon Gonzalez, 31. Zayas, after denying wrongdoing, collapsed into tears and said her plans went awry after two unexpected deaths in the family and a pregnancy that left her temporarily bedridden.

''This was no scheme,'' she said, sobbing. ``This was never intended . . . for all this to go into foreclosure. I'm still trying to clean this mess up. . . . I'm truly sorry that this happened, but things that happened were completely unexpected.''

Gonzalez declined repeated requests for comment.

NEW TO HOME LOANS

COUPLE RECRUITED

PROSPECTIVE BUYERS

Three years ago, as the real estate market was booming, Zayas and Gonzalez found their way into the lucrative mortgage lending industry by becoming loan officers.

It was easy enough. Loan officers in Florida don't need licenses.

For at least a year, the couple recruited home buyers for several mortgage companies.

By the time they landed at Mortgage Planners Investments & Financial Services in Coral Gables about 2004, they knew how the system worked. And they had launched a separate company, SeaSide Advantage, registered from their Weston home.

First, they reached out to Michelle and Ramiro Ramis, poker friends and distant relatives.

In little more than a month, the Ramises -- an auto-parts sales manager and an insurance-claims appraiser -- were approved for six mortgages worth $3.67 million, according to property records.

Accounts are not reflected on credit reports until after the first billing cycle, which can take up to 90 days. So lenders had no way of seeing the Ramises' multiple debts.

Soon, they had four homes in Coral Gables and two in the nearby Little Gables neighborhood in their names.

Michelle Ramis lamented that she had not known what she was getting into.

''I had no idea it was something illegal,'' she said. ''I knew that the profits could be made and the market was on . . . but if I ever had an idea my credit would have been ruined, I would not have done it. . . . It was a nightmare.'' Ramiro Ramis declined to comment.

DEAL AFTER DEAL

BUYER: `I HAD NO CLUE

THAT THIS WAS A SCAM'

Several months later, the web of deals expanded as one straw buyer recruited another.

Oral, an insurance-claims investigator, said he first heard about the deals over a round of golf with Ramiro Ramis, his colleague and friend. Ramis put him in touch with his relative, Gonzalez.

Oral said he understood he was making a real estate investment in a company, SeaSide Advantage, that bought, renovated and resold down-in-the-dump houses, renting them in the meantime to cover the mortgage. He agreed to provide his signature and Social Security number on loan documents, in exchange for $7,000.

Oral went to an attorney's office in Miami for the closing. He left without keys, without documents and without the address of the home he had just bought for more than half a million dollars. It was 4501 SW 13th Ter.

''As smart as I am, I had no clue that this was a scam because my best friend is telling me his cousin is doing it,'' Oral said. ``Marlon -- he was intelligent, persuasive, reassuring, confident.''

The appraiser listed on the documents, David Pickard, valued the house at $550,000, nearly $100,000 more than similar homes in the neighborhood at the time. Doreen Campbell, a Davie appraiser contacted by The Miami Herald, concludes that it was worth at most $470,000 at the time. An appraiser later hired by Oral put the figure lower, at $425,000.

Pickard defended his appraisal, saying he compared the house to similar ones in Coral Gables just blocks away.

His report said the house was in Coral Gables, but it is actually in unincorporated Little Gables. It also listed a folio number, used for land identification, of 03 for Coral Gables instead of 30 for unincorporated Miami-Dade County.

Pickard said he had made a mistake on the location, had no part in any scheme and was hired by Mortgage Planners but never paid.

''Appraisals are opinions of value,'' he said. ``In my opinion, it was worth that much.''

Other housing documents were rife with wrong information.

The mortgage application gave the wrong address on one document. It listed Oral's job as business development executive for Florida Inspection Service Team, at a salary of $17,000 a month. In fact, he said, he made about $4,000.

It named his boss as Frank Delgado. Public records show Delgado as a registered agent for Florida Inspection Service Team. He is also Zayas' ex-husband.

''I don't know anything about it,'' Delgado said.

Oral's $7,000 fee was delivered by courier to his home in two neat bundles. Closing documents show that SeaSide Advantage got a check for $68,468 from the sellers' proceeds.

Zayas and Gonzalez also earned $1,640 for arranging the mortgage and $4,232 in commissions, the documents show.

Accredited Home Lenders, the California subprime lender that approved the loan, declined to comment. The sellers, who may not have known about the behind-the-scenes deal, could not be located. One of the owners had the deal notarized in Honduras and may live abroad. Family members did not return calls for comment.

Mortgage companies are expected to review loan applications. Mortgage Planners, which employed the couple, denied knowing that they recruited straw buyers.

''That right there is completely illegal,'' said Magela Hechavarria, vice president of Mortgage Planners, who added that the loans seemed fine. ``We had no idea they were doing this at all.''

Hechavarria said the company eventually asked the couple to leave because their loans were not profitable. Afterward, she said, Mortgage Planners got several calls from lenders about nonpayment on loans the couple brokered.

`TRYING TO CHARM YOU'

BUYERS FEEL THE HEAT

OF UNPAID MORTGAGES

A few months later, the chain stretched one link further as yet another straw buyer, Oral, brought a friend into the deal.

Justin Owens is a 29-year-old nutritional-supplement salesman and body builder from Boca Raton. The couple behind the operation, Zayas and Gonzalez, signed him up for $1.32 million in loans for two homes, including their own in Weston, public records show. Owens said he was paid $11,000.

''They brought me a bottle of Johnny Walker Gold,'' Owens said. ``It was just their way of trying to charm you.''

Within a few months, things were falling apart, and the straw buyers were feeling the heat from the unpaid mortgages on the houses they technically owned.

The house at 4501 SW 13th Ter. was never rented, and its mailbox was spilling over with late-payment notices for the mortgage. Oral received a bill for appraisals on three other homes.

Lenders began to call the Ramises at home and at work. In November 2005, Michelle Ramis e-mailed Zayas, ``Obviously I need to call [the lenders] back but I fear that its [sic] about the past due amount on your homes.''

Two months later, Ramis seemed near the breaking point. ''I'm going to pray that all these houses get sold quick. . . . My nerves are so shot. . . . A day like today is overwhelming for me,'' she wrote to Zayas in an e-mail provided by Owens.

By mid-2006, seven houses were in foreclosure. And the couple at the heart of the deals, Zayas and Gonzalez, had stopped taking calls.

Wondering what was up, two of the straw buyers, Oral and Owens, finally visited the Weston house they now owned, where the couple had once lived.

''The house was disgusting,'' Owens said. ``There was mold, food, cat feces everywhere. The pool was a swamp.''

Inside, they found documents, photos and letters the couple had left behind when they moved out.

A crumpled receipt from a pawn shop in Little Havana showed that Gonzalez pawned a 9mm Walther pistol for $250 soon after moving in.

Bank notices showed that he was running out of money. And a letter from Meritage Mortgage demanded an explanation for discrepancies in income documents for the home loan and information on file with the Internal Revenue Service.

Oral and Owens went to the FBI. Oral also filed police reports with several other agencies, including the Miami-Dade County Economic Crimes Bureau.

The FBI said it is not investigating the complaint because it has only two agents in its Miami field office working on mortgage fraud.

Sgt. Richard Davis, who handles special projects for the Economic Crimes Bureau, said the person on the case is on vacation. Davis added that straw buyers such as Oral come into his office all the time.

''They all have the same recipe,'' he said, adding that mortgage fraud is common enough to affect many honest homeowners. ``You can't stick your head in the sand. It affects everybody.''

BUYER OF 2 PROPERTIES

HOME IN FORECLOSURE

FOR THE THIRD TIME

After the straw buyers went to the authorities, the couple who had managed the operation tried to placate them. Owens has kept eight voice-mail messages from Zayas asking him to work with her to resolve the problems.

A few months later, Zayas apparently found a way to unload two of the shell houses to another straw buyer, Renato Vilaca.

Vilaca, her housekeeper's husband, said that last summer he approached Zayas for advice on buying a small town house. He said Zayas checked his credit, which was very good, then recruit- ed him for some business deals involving property.

Vilaca became the buyer for Zayas' home in Coral Gables and another in Kendall, for $1.8 million in mortgages, property records show.

''I feel bad, bad, very bad,'' said Vilaca, 36. ``It's so bad my marriage is almost ending. I can't get out of this situation.''

Now the Coral Gables home is in foreclosure, for the third time in as many years. And the Kendall home is being investigated by the lender, George Pulido, president of LendAmerica Home Loans in Pinecrest.

Pulido is furious because the $800,000 loan on the house was never paid, putting severe financial pressure on his company.

The title agent on the deal, attorney Cristina Gomez, closed on Vilaca's loans but didn't record them until months later. Gomez also closed on a loan for Owens and was the title agent for 14 homes that went into foreclosure in Coral Gables and Shenandoah, public records show. LendAmerica Home Loans has filed a complaint against her with the Florida Bar, which is pending.

Mark Panunzio, Gomez's lawyer, said somebody else in Gomez's office committed fraud and did not file the documents as she instructed. He said Gomez is cooperating with the Florida Bar's investigation.

The company owned by the couple at the heart of the dubious deals, SeaSide Advantage, is still around. It has changed its focus to making both home and commercial loans, according to its website.

The company, operating from a Coral Gables building, is not licensed as a home lender. But its website, Sea SideAdvantage.com, proclaims: ``When The Bank Says No -- We Love To Say YES!''

All eight houses went into foreclosure. The banks sold some to new owners.

The house at 4501 SW 13th Ter. went into foreclosure and was last listed for $449,000.

It is still vacant.

 

Related Content

 

Do you suspect fraud in your neighborhood? Here are some red flags.

• The house has multiple owners over several years who never occupy the property, or sporadically rent it to tenants.

• The house is never listed for sale but is repeatedly sold for higher and higher values, only to fall into foreclosure within a year. It may fall into disrepair.

• The house is valued higher than similar homes on the block.

Do your own research:

• Find out who owns a house and its last sale prices by visiting www.miamidade.govpa or www.bcpa.net for Broward County.

• Click on the property search tabs and search by address. Broward County gives sales histories over several years but not foreclosure records. Miami-Dade lists only the most recent sale.

• Get the name of the current owner and go to www.miami-dadeclerkcom or www.broward county.org/records. There you can search property records by name. In straw borrower schemes, one person often buys several homes within one to three months, usually for nearly 100 percent financing.

• In the public records, look at the warranty deed used to transfer the property, mortgages taken out to buy the home, and foreclosure filings, which will appear as Lis Pendis.

To file a complaint:

If a real estate professional asks you to take part in a fraudulent mortgage deal, send complaints in writing to:

Attention: Consumer Complaints Section

Department of Business and Professional Regulation, Division of Real Estate

400 W. Robinson St., Suite N801

Orlando, FL 32801-1757

Identify the subject, clearly state allegations and include copies of supporting documents, such as contracts or checks. To download a complaint form, go to http://www.state.fl.usdbpr/re/formsre-2200.pd

 

For more Florida foreclosure news and related articles, please visit the Florida foreclosure News home page.

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