Giant Scam? Real Estate Dreams Dashed

Oct. 6, 2006 — -- It seemed like an answer to a prayer for people facing hard times.

The sales pitch sounded too good to be true, and it was.

One of the largest mortgage frauds in living memory began with a small-town lay minister and her daughter, a hairdresser. They gathered friends, neighbors and clients, and pitched a get-rich-quick scheme tinted with religion and targeted specifically at African-Americans.

"'This is what the white man has done to get ahead their whole life.' .... That was their exact words," said Barry Moore, a resident of Virginia who found himself the unwitting owner of two houses in Indiana.

Federal authorities are still investigating, but it appears the fraud ensnared more than 100 people, as many as 400 properties and as much as $80 million.

"Fannie Mae ... believed it was the mother of all mortgage fraud," said Robin Pickett, an Indiana real estate agent working with the fraud's victims.

Mortgage fraud has become an "epidemic," according to an FBI report issued last year. According to the report, the value of total fraud ballooned from about $400 million in 2004 to more than $1 billion in 2005 -- and is on pace this year to go even higher.

Beulah Penn was a lay minister in Martinsville, Va. Her daughter, Sharon, worked in a beauty salon in the town, which had lost thousands of factory jobs in recent years. Bealuh's son, Robert Penn, was a successful property speculator who lived -- literally -- on Easy Street, in Indianapolis. One evening in 2005, Beulah Penn and her daughter gathered friends and neighbors, and Robert Penn came into town for a dinner that Moore said felt "like a festive celebration."

According to investors, the Penns offered the opportunity to join what they called a "real estate investment group" as a blessing from God. They emphasized that no individual would bear responsibility. Instead, each would have a stake in a portfolio of properties that one of Robert Penn's companies owns. When the properties were eventually sold, the profit would be returned to the members. And according to the group, all that Robert Penn asked for was their Social Security numbers so that he could verify their credit ratings.