Cops: "Owner-Finance" Home Seller Pocketed Buyer's Monthly Payments & Stiffed Bank Holding Existing Mtg After Screwing Earlier Victim In Similar Scam

In West Palm Beach, Florida, The Palm Beach Post reports:

• Michael Chinloy, detectives allege, bought an Acreage home, sold it to someone, waited for her to move out, sold it to another couple, and then let it foreclose. And, in the process, pocketed at least $86,000.

• Now Chinloy, 46, booked into the Palm Beach County Jail [...], is charged with grand theft more than $20,000 and organized scheme to defraud more than $50,000. He's being held in lieu of $20,000 bail.

• According to a Palm Beach County Sheriff's report, the couple believed they'd bought the home from Chinloy in June 2007. The deal: $30,000 down plus a monthly mortgage payment of $3,290.42. Over two years, the couple claimed, they paid Chinloy more than $120,000 before they started getting foreclosure notices.

• It turned out Chinloy had bought the Acreage home in July 2006 for $360,905. Three months later, he sold it for $384,000 to a woman in Palm Beach Gardens. The woman, who had just gone through a divorce and had credit problems, said Chinloy kept jacking up her mortgage payments until she could no longer pay and she moved out in May 2007.

• A month after that, Chinloy sold the house to the couple for $354,983. Then he stopped paying the mortgage and the home was foreclosed on in January 2008.

For more, see West Palm Beach man charged with grand theft, real estate fraud; allegedly sold same house twice.