From Staff Reports
RALEIGH - A Wake County Superior Court judge has halted a real-estate scheme that
misled people into buying rental properties in the Triangle and
Fayetteville.
Dozens of investors were left with loans they cannot afford and rental
properties worth far less than what they paid, Attorney General
Roy Cooper announced in a statement released this morning.
Under the court order signed by Judge Paul
Gessner, defendant Maurice Jenkins and the limited liability corporations
he manages -- Lessane Properties and Fayetteville's Property Center -- are
prohibited from continuing "unfair and deceptive business practices" in
the real-estate venture.
The case against two other defendants, Arkansas resident Holly Stevens
and The Eddie Peyton Group LLC that she managed with Jenkins, are
pending. The Attorney General's Office said it believes they no
longer operate within the state.
According to the attorney general's statement, Jenkins and the
other defendants told potential investors the defendants could help them
make a profit by buying houses out of foreclosure and renting them out
without having to put any money down. Jenkins funded the scheme by
misrepresenting the values of the properties he sold to those consumers,
Cooper said in the statement, and by causing them to take out mortgages
and lines of credit for more than the properties are worth.
The defendants then promised to manage the rental properties and cover
the monthly mortgage payments, taxes and insurance on the homes,
according to Cooper's complaint, while telling investors they would
receive $500 a month in profit per home.
But the defendants did not charge enough rent to cover all those
promised payments, the Attorney General's Office said. In some cases,
according to Cooper's release, the homes were never rented or were too
damaged to be inhabited.
Citing public records in Cumberland, Durham, Harnett, Robeson, Sampson
and Wake counties, the Attorney General's Office said Jenkins and the
other defendants sold more than 120 homes since 2004.
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