Recent Assignment Contract Bust

[Scott Hope]

I live in Fort Wayne Indiana. Just last year J. T. Radebaugh was charged and jailed for assigning contracts on real estate properties. He made around 800K in 2 years. The local Attorney General filed charges saying that because he didn't have a realtors or brokerage license he couldn't collect fees such as his "assigment fee". That is how the paper described it. They went on to say that he was negotiating a price with the home seller and marking it up to a "cash" buyer and collecting an assigment fee. This sounds an awful lot like what I have been working to do for the past couple months.

Anyone out there have any insight? I would like to think that double closing would eliminate this argument becuase I would essentially take ownership of title and then simply sell again. This can't be any different from buying it myself and selling it a month later in the eyes of the law. Any thoughts. If you want to read the article look up his name on the Journal Gazette of Fort Wayne, IN.

[Ryan Webber]

Here's what I could dig up.

http://www.fortwayne.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/JG/20070928/LOCAL/709280322

http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080314/LOCAL/803140324/0/LOCAL07

Pages 7-9 http://www.in.gov/dlgf/files/ALLEN_2009_NARRATIVE.pdf

There is definitely more to the story here. It would seem to me that the State of Indiana DID use the fact that he was using an option contract and then assigning the properties rather than being in the chain of title to prosecute him. Now the reason WHY they decided to prosecute was not because he was assigning properties but because his Ponzy scheme was collapsing. He made up to double the purchase price selling the properties on allegedly inflated appraisals (the appraisers had their licenses suspended) to investors that he would then buy the properties back from on land contracts and then rent them out at rents that would not cover the mortgage payments. He stopped paying the investors and they went to the attorney general.

The Indiana attorney general's office stated