Finance guru Eddie Hobbs advises millionaires: invest smart money on the devastation of Detroit

by fred Tue Jul 23, 2013 05:56

WSWS has two current articles on Detroit situation:

Detroit workers speak on city’s bankruptcy

Detroit bankruptcy sets stage for national assault on public-sector pensions

by Russell Woods Mon Aug 19, 2013 04:48

Hobbs company, Brendan Investments, use Metro Property Group in Detroit to supply their properties. Metro Property Group are currently the subject of a massive lawsuit which very well documents a clear case of fraud and racketeering.

The group of investors who are suing in the US have obtained evidence to show that when Metro Property Group created the sales details for their properties Metro Property Group didn't even own the houses on those details. Most if not all of the properties Metro were marketing were in foreclosure and were still owned by a bank or by another company when the sales details were created.

Metro Property Group used Google Earth photos of the houses and streets for the details (pictures that were taken years previously when the houses and streets were in good repair). These gave the illusion that the homes were in nice areas and lived in - when in fact they were neither.

Metro Property Group then made up a list of extensive refurbishments for these details claiming the houses had new roofs, furnaces, doors, windows etc. They then they lied about a tenant, claiming there was a Section 8 tenant in place paying a very high rent....... hundreds of dollars a month above any rent they could ever hope to achieve on the house. Metro Property Group did all this when they were not even the owners of the properties so there was no possibility they could have refurbished them and placed a tenant, it was a complete scam. In some cases they flipped the houses on to an investor on the same day that they themselves closed on the sale. Put simply they were flipping on the houses as fast as they could at a huge profit (tens of thousands of dollars) empty and unrepaired.

Once they had conned the investor into parting with their money Metro Property Group then paid the investor the fabricated rent as described on the details to give the illusion there was a tenant in place. This is typical of a Ponzi scheme where investors are paid their own or other investors money as a 'return' on the investment. Within the first year the investor would be told by Metro Property Group that the tenant had left or been evicted and the payments would stop. Metro Property Group's own attorney admits to having carried out ' .......literally hundreds of evictions'. The independent accountant who files tax returns on the investors behalf admits that virtually no investor out of the hundreds he deals with has made any money in their second year of ownership. Does this sound like a good bet to anyone?

Evidence shows that Metro Property Group fabricated leases which were dated months before they even owned the properties, in fact in some cases the leases were dated months before the property was even put up for sale on the Michigan Listing Service. Leases are legal documents but Metro Property Group had no compunction about forging these in order to cover their tracks.

Currently there are hundreds of houses in Detroit which were sold by Metro Property Group as outlined above. Most of them still in the state of disrepair they were sold in and usually empty and uninhabited. The investors who own them are desperate. They have been subjected to massive fines and they have to pay taxes on these slums. Those that do have tenants are receiving hundreds of dollars a month below the rents Metro fabricated and the repair bills are huge and endless. Does this sound like a good bet to anyone?

Metro Property Group built its 'success' by lying to hundreds of investors. While the chickens may now be coming home to roost for Metro Property Group it seems incredible that a financial guru would continue to back Detroit as a great place to invest. If it were such a great place why would Metro Property Group have needed to scam hundreds of investors? Why are there now hundreds of desperate investors who can't find tenants for their properties? The answers are really very simple: Detroit is a good place to invest' isn't one of them.

by Passer Thu Jan 22, 2015 12:19

This is stale and incorrect. The Irish firm do not use Metro as a service provider and departed them it seems a year ago. The civil action against Metro is scheduled for late 2015.