tinyurl.com/yuv7hh -> www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sun_fraud_0224feb24,1,7543625.story
decrease text size The new buyers of a rundown graystone on the South Side showed up Jan. They took the plywood off the front door and went inside to make sure the utilities had been shut off. Sitting upright in the corner of a bedroom off the kitchen was a human skeleton in a red tracksuit. Neighbors told police the corpse was almost certainly Randy Johnson, a middle-age man who lived alone in the North Kenwood house. The cause of Johnson's death has not yet been determined, but it is just one of the mysteries about 4578 S Oakenwald Ave. Somehow, Johnson's house was transferred three times to new owners without anyone noticing he was inside. It's a story involving forged deeds, a corrupt title company and a South Side family that has been under investigation for mortgage fraud.
com%2Fbusiness%2Fchi-sun_fraud_0224feb24%2C0%2C7175887%2Cprin tstory%3Flast_modified%3D2%2F25%2F08%207%3A15%3A47 Left holding the bag is Countrywide Home Loans, the nation's largest mortgage lender and a company whose practices are being scrutinized by the Illinois attorney general's office. Now it is likely to lose it all because it financed the sale of a home whose rightful owner was in no condition to sell. The intrigue surrounding the Oakenwald house offers a glimpse into the strange and murky world of mortgage fraud. Lenders duped into making loans have every incentive to unload the properties, and almost none to blow the whistle on wrongdoers. If borrowers or government watchdogs fail to cry foul, the same home can change hands again and again before anyone is the wiser. They just foreclose," said Daniel Lindsey, a supervisory attorney with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago. Most of the time, he said, the foreclosures go through because no one with an interest has the legal firepower to stop them. As lenders prepare to move an unprecedented number of troubled properties off their books, it's buyer beware with a vengeance. Lenders filed 91,000 foreclosures in Illinois last year, a number expected to go higher in 2008. If fraud was involved in only a small percentage of those loans, it still translates into thousands of homes with troubled histories that could come back to haunt lenders, owners and entire neighborhoods. Last week, Countrywide vacated the recent sale of 4578 S Oakenwald and returned the buyer's money. That happened only after Cook County officials announced they would fight to put the house back in the Johnson family's name. Known in neighborhood All the longtime neighbors at the south end of Oakenwald Avenue knew Randy Johnson and his mother, Arrellia Johnson. They said he didn't work except for tinkering with cars in front of his house, and as he got older he became reclusive. There were "Keep Out" and "Private Property" signs posted all over his small back yard, which was crowded with six city garbage cans. A metal shopping cart blocked the concrete stairs to the basement door, and a collection of jury-rigged chains and padlocks held outside doors shut. Oakenwald neighbor Craig Cox remembers that it took years for Johnson to respond to him when he waved. Scott Clayton, whose garage faced Johnson's across the alley, recalled a few run-ins with him. One time Johnson complained when Clayton was clearing snow from his garage door and piling it next to a brick wall that served as Johnson's back fence. Clayton didn't understand why until later, when he saw Johnson climbing over the brick wall because his gate was broken. Whatever his quirks, Johnson was a neighborhood fixture, sitting on his front stoop in a butterfly chair with his dog, Prince, beside him. Things got worse for Johnson, neighbors say, after his family began to fall apart. Then his mother died in 2001, and Johnson was left alone in the three-story house. In November 2005, Johnson was arrested for brandishing a "short sword" when a female friend wanted to go home, police records show. He didn't stop her, but police charged him with aggravated assault. He posted bond and was ordered to return for a court date in early December 2005. Johnson never showed up, records show, and his bond was forfeited. When Johnson hadn't appeared outside for weeks in early 2006, neighbors called the city's non-emergency number asking for well-being checks, fearing he might have had an accident. Firefighters broke down the front door and searched but didn't locate Johnson.
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