It was a partly cloudy summer day when Jackson, Fordham and their guests took over the Mayflower Hotel. Booking a wedding at the downtown hotel, especially in June, is never an inexpensive venture. The couple reserved a majority of the Mayflower's halls and banquet centers for their wedding ceremony and reception and 56 rooms for the night of the wedding.
Aside from LaBelle -- who gave a seven-song concert with "Lady Marmalade" as her finale -- gospel harpist Jeff Majors and R&B crooner Raheem DeVaughn performed, as did a Howard University choir.
At one point during the reception, shown on the video, Jackson stood in the middle of the dance floor as the master of ceremonies encouraged guests to bring their "dollars, fives, tens, twenties, fifties and hundreds. It's the Money Store, baby."
One man showered Jackson with dozens of bills as she stood under the cascading dollars. Meanwhile, Fordham appears in the video sitting behind her at a table counting and straightening the bills brought to him in a sack. The nuptials were later featured in a wedding advertisement in The Washington Post Magazine.
The good fortune wouldn't last.
Already, the real estate market had turned sour, making the foreclosure recovery business difficult, even when the process was working properly.
Investigators are looking into whether Jackson's company actually used the equity it drew out of homes to make the promised mortgage payments. Some of that money was shared with Fordham's investment company, Fordham & Fordham, according to investigators. State law prohibits foreclosure consultants from investing in firms that are owned by family members.
"I would say Joy Jackson got into a position where she was not able to keep her promises," Duncan, the former employee, said. "Her intent was good, but the sky started falling."
By the end of summer 2006, Metropolitan had begun to lay off employees. It stopped airing ads. Duncan said he realized something was wrong when he returned to his office one October afternoon and found employees having a "shredding party." All the documents on his desk, he said, were missing.
The company shut down in December.
In May, Jackson and Fordham put their house on Glasgow Court, with its designer carpet and marble floors, on the market.
In early June, an "estate sale" sign went up: Beds, expensive lamps, jewelry, designer clothes, even a rack of fur coats were for sale, neighbors said.
mmnfinancial
123 Posts
Posted - 08/30/2007 : 09:22:15 AM
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The Boys are coming: dated 8/30/2007
LINK:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/NewsSearch?sb=-1&st=Metropolitan%20money%20store&
TEXT COPY:
District Sues Mortgage Company Based in Prince George's County
Goal Is to Help Clients Retain Equity and Homes
By Ovetta Wiggins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 30, 2007; B01
The D.C. attorney general filed a lawsuit yesterday against Metropolitan Money Store Corp., hoping to recover lost home equity and prevent foreclosure for city residents who dealt with the Prince George's County-based mortgage company.
The complaint, which seeks restitution and damages, is the first filed by a legal agency against Metropolitan and its owners, who are under a federal mortgage fraud investigation.
"We have the evidence to make the case," Attorney General Linda Singer said in an interview yesterday. "Once we have proof, we're going to move forward."
Singer said she was driven to file the lawsuit to keep at least 27 District residents from losing their homes. Investigators say Metropolitan promised to rescue homeowners from foreclosure but instead drained the equity from clients' homes. "We think it's an outrage," Singer said.
In Annapolis yesterday, state lawmakers and officials vowed to introduce legislation that would address such foreclosure rescue operations and, more broadly, help residents at risk of losing their homes. The state's foreclosure rate has climbed 345 percent in the past year, and Maryland ranks 16th in the nation in foreclosures, up from 40th last year, according to statistics presented to the state Senate Finance Committee.
The D.C. complaint names as defendants Metropolitan, Joy Jackson and 11 others, including Jackson's husband, Kurt Fordham.
The defendants "unjustly enriched themselves by participating in a scheme that used misrepresentations and unconscionably high fees" to strip equity from the homes of District residents, according to the suit.
Jackson and Fordham, who were featured in a Washington Post article Sunday, have not responded to repeated requests for comment; efforts to locate them have not been successful.
The District suit seeks to keep the homeowners from going into foreclosure, to void the contract between the homeowner and the defendants, to order the defendants to pay restitution and to require the defendants to pay civil penalties up to $1,000 for each violation of the District's Consumer Protection Procedures Act.
The attorney general's office began investigating Metropolitan in May, officials said. The FBI and the Secret Service have also begun fraud investigations into the company's dealings.
A class-action lawsuit was filed in federal court last month on behalf of as many as 400 homeowners in Maryland, the District and Virginia who say they have lost $60 million in equity through Metropolitan.
Metropolitan operated a foreclosure rescue program that targeted homeowners with at least $100,000 in equity.
Investors would essentially get $10,000 and take ownership of homes that were about to go into foreclosure. The homeowners were told they could live rent-free for a year and buy back their houses at the end of the year.
But when the homes passed to the "straw buyer," Metropolitan would borrow as much as possible against the value, effectively siphoning the equity and increasing the cost of the home, according to the suit.
Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez, who is chairman of the Maryland Homeownership Preservation Task Force, said foreclosures will be a "top priority" in the next legislative session. "People are calling, asking what can be done," he said.
Perez said he will suggest legislation to toughen penalties for mortgage fraud.