By Laura Crimaldi -
The controversy surrounding mortgage middleman Dwight Jenkins of
Dorchester is a window into the get-rich-quick housing frenzy that has
left a trail of foreclosed homes, broken dreams and blighted streets
across Massachusetts and other states. Yesterday, the Boston Sunday
Herald explored Jenkins' shady dealings.
But Jenkins is at the bottom of the responsibility chain. In Part 2 of
our series Inside the Mortgage Meltdown, the Herald looks at the
brokers and businesses caught up in a scandal that bankrupted many and
rocked the global economy.
A trash hauler with no savings was given four no-money-down mortgages
worth $800,000.
A security guard making $15 an hour was said to be earning $114,000 a
year and given four mortgages worth more than $700,000.
A 28-year-old white-collar renter from Arlington snapped up mortgages
worth $1.3 million with no collateral or money down.
These were the kinds of deals being cut left and right by brokers,
banks and property middlemen like Dwight Jenkins of Dorchester during
the overheated Bay State housing boom of the early 2000s.
Now those deals have gone sour, like millions of similar bad loans
around the nation. The U.S. housing market and economy are reeling
from the aftershocks.
Companies and individuals who made such transactions are tied up in
court. The deals - known as "subprime" loans - are yet another object
lesson in how a fast-profit frenzy inevitably goes south.
The resulting meltdown has hit the Bay State hard. But Jenkins is at
the bottom of a chain of responsibility that implicates cor****ate
America and Wa****ngton officials.
Defendants in a federal lawsuit in Boston include now-infamous names
in the subprime collapse - Fremont Investment & Loan of Tampa, Fla.,
which is under court order not to initiate foreclosures in the Bay
State; and New England Merchants Corp. of Arlington, which was shut
down last year by state banking regulators.
"It was a financing frenzy," said Sheila Farragher-Gemma, co-founder
of ForeclosuresMass.com.
"I think two or three years ago, literally, you needed a pulse to
qualify and that was pretty much it," she said. "People got in houses
for 100 percent or 125 percent of their value on any day of the week."
Falsified applications
Between Feb. 7, 2005, and Feb. 28, 2005, for example, trash hauler and
Marine vet Robert G. Smith bought houses in Dighton and Dorchester for
no money down.
Smith, who has a learning disability, claims in his federal suit he
was duped into buying the properties by Laurice P. Taylor, an
independent contractor for EB Real Estate Group in Fields Corner.
EB Real Estate broker and owner Mark Warren said in an interview that
Taylor was fired after hundreds of fliers advertising the investment
that lured Smith were found in the trash at their office.
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