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The fallout continues around the state from Jim McConville’s multi-million dollar swindle.
The swindle’s San Diego County footprint was the focus of our investigation earlier this year. We described how McConville used rented identities to buy 81 condos in Escondido and San Marcos in 2008, pulling $12.5 million from the deals. The condos are making their way through foreclosure now.
- ABC Channel 7 in San Francisco aired another installment in its coverage of McConville last night about Andre Todd, an Oakland man who allowed McConville to use his name to purchase five units in Fresno using loans for 100 percent of the $225,000 price for each one, the station reported.
Now Todd is in a similar situation as the others who rented their identities to McConville for condo purchases around the state — McConville has stopped paying the mortgages and their credit scores have been ruined.
For Todd, an officer in the U.S. Navy, his credit score has fallen from more than 800 to about 500. That means he can’t serve on the tour of duty he volunteered for in Afghanistan; his security clearance is on hold. He’s pursuing short sales for some of the units at $22,000 each.
“Now my hands are tied because I can’t go,” Todd said. (The station’s first story on the situation aired in July.)
- Tenants from a Central Valley condo complex with ties to McConville were successful in convincing their city council to pass a law last week that would stop banks from evicting them over the foreclosure process, statewide advocacy group Tenants Together announced.
The Ridgecrest law requires that banks only evict tenants after foreclosing on a property in specific circumstances, like the tenant misses rent payments, not just as an automatic step in the course of the foreclosure. From a press release:
Large numbers of tenants attended hearings on the measure at City Hall, greatly outnumbering opponents of the ordinance. A group of realtors spoke against the law, but could not stop the momentum of the tenants who turned out in force at every hearing.
Tenants together got involved in Ridgecrest when they received hotline calls from tenants affected by McConville’s project called La Mirage, a 300-condo complex in the Kern County town.
- If you missed it, the San Francisco Weekly published this story a couple of weeks ago — a compelling story about an investor who said he lost millions of dollars to McConville.
You can find all of our coverage on here.