Oregon Foreclosure Rescue Operator Facing Lawsuits Alleging Dubious Sale Leasebacks, Accusations Of False Statements Made In Bankruptcy Filings

In Oregon, the Clackamas Review reports:

• A year ago, Yulanden Moore owned a two-story, three-bedroom house in Aloha with her husband, Jimmy, where they helped former prison inmates get back on their feet. But now, the Moores are the ones who are relying on the kindness of others. That’s because when the Moores fell behind on their mortgage payments last year, they signed up with a “foreclosure rescue” service that promised to turn their financial nightmare around through a complex series of financial deals. But instead of ensuring that the Moores could keep their house, the deal they signed with DK Investments gave ownership of their house over to a group of investors and had the Moores “rent” their house back. The Moores fell behind on the rent, set higher than the previous mortgage payment, and were eventually evicted.

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• The Moores are suing Jeremy Killian, the Oregon City man behind DK Investments, and his associates, for $1.1 million in damages. In a lawsuit filed in Washington County Circuit Court in April 2007, the Moores allege that Killian’s offer of help was a ruse and that he intended all along to take their property.

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• Two other property owners, Enrique Moreno, of Hillsboro, and Ron Knox, of Portland have filed similar suits. Killian’s former business partners have also filed a lawsuit against him, accusing him of siphoning off money into his own accounts and participating in “unlawful business practices.”

• And a lawyer at the U.S. Trustee’s office has lodged filings in Bankruptcy Court that accuse Killian of understating his assets and filing for bankruptcy to avoid the flurry of lawsuits. [...] “The debtors made misrepresentations on their bankruptcy documents and during their meeting of creditors intended to invoke the automatic stay to defeat state court litigation related to Mr. Killian’s ‘special financing business,’” [Carla McClurg, an Oregon attorney for the United States Trustee] said in bankruptcy documents. McClurg also said Killian’s operation was much larger than the three lawsuits currently filed. “This scheme involved the purchase by individual investors of at least 75 parcels of real property from homeowners faced with foreclosure and the lease-back of the property to the original homeowner with a two-year option to repurchase the real property,” she said in bankruptcy documents.

For more, see ‘We’re homeless - we lost everything’ (Families are accusing an Oregon City man of fraudulently taking their homes).