Defunct Title Insurance Agency Tagged With Lawsuit Over Alleged Failure To Pay Off Liens At Closing On New Home Sales Involving Dubious Developer

In Clark County, Nevada, Vegas Inc. reports:

• Lawsuits are piling up in what attorneys call another real estate scam in Las Vegas — one in which buyers of new homes faced foreclosure a few months later because liens hadn’t been paid off during the escrow process and fraudulent title insurance policies were issued.
• At the center of the litigation is the now-closed Direct Title Insurance Agency Inc., which operated at 8965 S. Eastern Ave., Suite 150. That company and others were hit with a class-action lawsuit alleging racketeering on April 15 in Clark County District Court in Las Vegas by attorney Matthew Callister.
• Two homeowners in that lawsuit said they bought new homes late last year from Nevada Homes Group Inc./Wagner Homes Inc. in northwest Las Vegas neighborhoods called Day Dawn Vista and Day Dawn Crossing II — but both soon received foreclosure notices. That’s when they learned bank, subcontractor and homeowner association liens they were unaware of hadn’t been paid off at closing.
• The title insurance policies were fraudulent, the lawsuit charged, because they falsely represented the homeowners were buying homes free and clear of encumbrances.

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• The lawsuit says Paul Wagner is the president of Wagner Homes and is a director of Nevada Homes Group. A different individual, Paul Wagner IV, is president of Nevada Homes Group, the lawsuit says.
• The suit says Wagner Homes/Nevada Homes Group induced the homebuyers into choosing Direct Title Insurance Agency for escrow and title insurance services, but didn’t disclose that Paul Wagner, the founder of Wagner Homes, had been indicted last year on bank and wire fraud charges.
• Wagner has pleaded innocent in that case in which a federal grand jury alleged that from 2007 to 2009, as a home builder, he arranged to sell homes at inflated prices to fraudulently kick back money from the mortgage loan to buyers as incentives for them to buy his homes.
• “The plaintiffs were not told that Nevada Homes Group was in reality a change in name only, designed to conceal the fact of Wagner’s indictment, and that the Wagner family still were the owners of Nevada Homes Group, with Paul Wagner IV being president and Paul Wagner being an officer,” the lawsuit charges.

For more, see Lawsuits allege Las Vegas homebuyers victims of title insurance scam.