Sale Leaseback Foreclosure Rescue Peddler Gets 10 Years After Jury Finds Guilt On Charges Of Obtaining Goods By False Pretense

In Horry County, South Carolina, The Horry Independent reports:

• A Lexington, N.C., man was sentenced to 10 years in jail and fined $500 for each of two counts of obtaining goods by false pretense [] after an Horry County jury found that he had been involved in questionable mortgage transactions.
• Robert Steve Jolly, 61, [...] will serve the two sentences concurrently. An Horry County jury was unable to agree on a third charge of practicing law without a license and was declared hung on that issue.
• Several Horry County homeowners testified in a two-day trial that they turned to Jolly for help with their mortgages, but ended up with nothing but trouble. Jolly’s attorney Wesley Locklair told the jury that what Jolly did was not criminal and his intentions were not to cheat or defraud distressed homeowners. “He was trying to assist in saving their home from banks with bad lending practices,” Locklair said.
• The case went to the jury late Wednesday after Jolly took the stand in his own defense. At one point Jolly was named as a defendant in 45 mortgage foreclosure cases.

Source: Jolly gets 10 years.

See also The Sun News: Three more caught in Myrtle Beach area mortgage fraud:

• Jolly had been operating a foreclosure rescue scam since March 2007, according to a lawsuit filed against him by the state attorney general's office. At least 45 people were taken in by the scam, court records show.
• Jolly told home owners that he could suspend foreclosure proceedings if they would sign their home over to him and then start making monthly payments to him, according to court documents. Jolly, however had no authority to stop the foreclosures. Instead, he kept the monthly payments for himself as the foreclosures proceeded.

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• "Mr. Jolly instructed that if I would sign my properties to him he would take over ownership, avoid foreclosure, rent the properties back to me at a rate I could afford based on my income and offered to sell the properties back to me in the future if and when I could afford them," [one homeowner] said.