Minnesota Equity Stripping Victim Now Suing Foreclosure Rescue Operator

Minnesota Public Radio reports the story of Anita Nunn, a Minneapolis-area resident who lost her home more than a year ago in a foreclosure rescue deal. She lived in her South Minneapolis home since 1999 until the onset of her financial problems triggered by a job loss when her job at a call center was transferred to India. She was unable to find another job until after her unemployment ran out, at which point she was already behind on her mortgage. When the offers of "help" started pouring in, she responded to one that resulted in a foreclosure rescue transaction involving The Ordway Group. The story describes what happened next:

• The company and an outside investor bought Nunn's house, bringing it out of foreclosure. They then rented it back to Nunn. Under the agreement, she could eventually buy the house back. But her monthly rent payments were several hundred dollars higher than they were when she owned the house, and Nunn was soon unable to keep up.

• If she had sold her house instead of taking the deal, she could have walked away with approximately $50,000 in home equity. Instead, she lost that equity, and in 2004, she lost the house. The company evicted her so they could resell it.

• Nunn is now suing The Ordway Group, alleging the company misrepresented a deal that offered hope that she would keep her home but instead doomed her to losing it. "I think they took away her options," says Nunn's attorney Bryan Battina. He says the deal preyed upon her hope that she could stay in the house. "Just the simple fact that they talked her into this agreement that was basically set up to fail, they in turn took away any other opportunities she had," Battina says.

For more, see Equity-stripping scams could rise as foreclosures increase.

For more on equity stripping scams, generally, see DREAMS FORECLOSED: The Rampant Theft of Americans' Homes Through Equity-stripping Foreclosure 'Rescue' Scams (4.61 MB approx.).