KLAS-TV Channel 8 News Las VegasI-Team Investigation: From Homeowner to Homeless
Where do you begin when you have exactly eight hours to empty a house you've lived in for years? Former homeowner Mike Ogilvie said, "I definitely did not plan on moving out of this place."Nevada has the highest foreclosure rate in the country. Experts say that glut of financially strapped homeowners has attracted a new breed of scam-artist looking to cash in.
You've probably heard it said before that many of us are just a paycheck or two away from the streets. Well, Mike Ogilvie never thought he was one of those people. But a series of financial problems left him facing foreclosure, until a stranger offered him a bail out that cost him everything.
Click here to read the 26-page complaint
Where do you begin when you have exactly eight hours to empty a house you've lived in for years? Former homeowner Mike Ogilvie said, "I definitely did not plan on moving out of this place."
For Ogilvie, eviction felt like a flip of the finger, a final insult from two people who promised to rescue him from foreclosure. And instead, with a subtler slight of the hand, Ogilvie claims they ripped him off.
Ogilvie said, "They own the house. They took it from us, basically. They conned me into signing it over to them."
Sales contracts show Ken Ragle, the president of a company called Dreamscape Solutions, agreed to purchase Ogilvie's house for $233,000. The deal would stop the pending foreclosure and offer Ogilvie the chance to stay put. He would then rent the house from the Ragle and buy it back in a few years for close to a $100,000 over the purchase price.
"There was no deal at the end. It was him and his investor walking away with everything I own, except for these possessions," Ogilvie explained.
Just before the house closed, Ragle sold the contract to another buyer, a California realtor named Shana Burbank. In the paperwork shuffle to save his home, Ogilvie got stuck with the mortgage and Burbank got the deed to the house.
That $233,000 sales price was never paid.
Matthew Callister, Ogilvie's attorney, said, "The note, the promissory note is still in the name of Ogilvies. When you quitclaim your property, that doesn't do away with the underlying debt you still owe. So the Ogilvie's still owe the money. They just don't own the house any more."
Callister filed a lawsuit alleging, among other things, beach of contract, bad faith and wrongful eviction. It took a court order just to get Ogilvie back into the house to collect his stuff.
Clark County District Court Judge Charles Thompson said, "I'm going to grant the motion to recover the property and I'm not going to charge them for it."
Though Burbank lost this round, her attorney denies she's done anything wrong.
And what of Ken Ragle?
The I-Team will let you know if the law ever catches up to him.
Attorney Matthew Callister believes he has skipped town. "In an under-regulated market like Nevada, when you've got a lot of real estate scams, and a lot of real estate piranhas, they will come out to prey upon the weakest," he said.
People like Ogilvie and the thousands like him, who in the struggle to save what little they have, lose everything.
Mike Ogilvie said, "They know I have nothing. So, it just seems like they're trying to scam me even more. They're just trying to keep me down enough where I'll just give up and walk away."
Ogilvie admits he has come close. Less than a mile from what used to be his house, desperation has moved in. "I can't put down. I'm in the red truck at wherever the hell I am. Come knock on my window," he told the I-Team.
Problems like how to pay the mortgage now seem minor when compared to how to get your next meal. "I'm a normal hardworking guy. I've never been in a situation like this before," he added.
It's a situation where the roof over your head is the cab of a truck and you don't know when to expect four walls.
The legal process is a slow one, so Ogilvie's case, and his house, may be tied up in the courts for some time.
No one tracks the numbers on how often this happening nationwide, but consumer experts put it in the many, many thousands. And too often the people it happens to don't have any money left to hire a lawyer.
Email your comments to Investigative Reporter Colleen McCarty.
