Illinois AG Scores Court Order Directing Notorious Chicago Businessman To Compensate Five Homeowners & Pay $340K Fine In Connection w/ Equity Stripping, Home Improvement Racket That Used Victims' Reverse Mortgage Proceeds To Pay For Shoddy Repairs (If Any Were Done At All)

In Chicago, Illinois, The Chicago Defender reports:

• A Cook County judge has ordered a Chicago businessman behind a reverse mortgage scam targeting elderly African-Americans to compensate five of his victims and quit operating his business while his case winds through the courts.
  
  Mark Diamond, who may have defrauded more than 100 homeowners in a mortgage and home repair scheme, was also ordered to pay a fine of $340,000 by Cook County Circuit Court Judge David B. Atkins last week.
  
  Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan sought the injunction against Diamond; testimony from the five people who will receive restitution was included in her office’s request for the injunction.
  
  “This is a significant victory for people whose lives were destroyed by Mark Diamond,” Madigan said in an email. “Diamond’s equity-stripping schemes financially devastated too many older African Americans and their families. This win will prevent him from conning people out of their life savings and homes in Illinois.”
  
  Diamond could not be reached for comment.
  
  Reverse mortgages are a tool for senior citizens to convert a portion of their home’s value into cash. The loan doesn’t have to be repaid until the person moves out of the house or dies. If family members want to keep the house, they have to pay off the debt.
  
  Last January, The Chicago Reporter wrote about how Diamond has been accused in many federal cases of swindling elderly black homeowners on the city’s South and West sides and sued dozens of times in Circuit Court. Diamond would convince the homeowner to take out the mortgage by saying the money would pay for home repairs, maneuver to get most or all of the money from the transaction, and perform shoddy work, if anything was done at all, according to several of the lawsuits.
  
  Madigan said she filed the injunction request in October 2014 after an uptick in the number of complaints against Diamond.
  
  The goal of the injunction was to stop Diamond from conducting business while a 2009 case she filed on behalf of dozens of elderly black homeowners is adjudicated, she said. The 2009 lawsuit alleged that Diamond and other mortgage and home repair companies had stripped nearly $1.3 million in equity from the homeowners, many of whom lost their houses in foreclosure.

For more, see Judge orders compensation for elderly black victims of reverse mortgage scam.

For the court order, see People v. United Construction of America, Inc., et al.