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hardship or personal tragedy.31. Using Reinholdt’s list, Defendant Hoffman, through approval of and direction byDefendants Ohu, Brunner and Schultz, contacted homeowners by telephone and informed themthat Fortune Financial, LLC could assist them with saving their home from a foreclosure sale andallow them to remain in the home until they could repurchase it. After an initial contact bytelephone, Defendant Hoffman set up a face-to-face meeting with the homeowner to explain howDefendants could purportedly save their home from foreclosure.32. Defendant Brunner and Defendant Hoffman would then meet with thesehomeowners to discuss how they could assist them with saving their home from foreclosure andrepurchase it in the future. Defendant Brunner and Defendant Hoffman never disclosed beforeclosing the amount of equity that would be transferred to Defendants through Platinum FinancialGroup, which Defendant Brunner formed to obtain and then distribute the equity proceedsamong Defendants.33. Having found homeowner victims, Defendants Ohu, Schultz, and Brunner wouldlocate and persuade acquaintances to purchase the homes and lease them back to the homeowner.Defendants did not disclose to the investors the substantial amount of equity that Defendantswould obtain at closing. Defendants Ohu and Brunner would prepare the lease agreements andDefendants Ohu and Schultz would participate in eviction proceedings on behalf of the investors34. Defendants provided homeowners with a sale contract and a lease agreementcontaining an option to repurchase the property. The homeowners were not told who waspurchasing the home and were not allowed to negotiate the sale price or the repurchase price.35. During the telephone and the face-to-face contact, Defendants misled thehomeowners to believing that working with Defendants was the best way to save their home, butDefendants did not address the amount or fact of a proceed assignment that would occur atclosing, and, as a result, induced the victims to sign the sale contract and lease agreementthrough false, misleading, and deceptive conduct.36. To the extent any of the homeowners knew of the approximate amount of equityin their homes, Defendants would falsely promise that the equity would be used to assist thehomeowners with improvements, repurchasing the home, put in escrow, and/or otherwise beavailable to homeowners in the future.37. Defendants never disclosed to homeowners that all the equity at sale wouldinstead be transferred to Defendants through Platinum Financial Group, which would thendistribute the proceeds among the investor, Defendant Brunner, Defendant Ohu, DefendantSchultz, and Defendant Hoffman pursuant to their common plan.38. At the closing, Defendants presented for the first time an assignment of proceedsdocument that operated to transfer all the proceeds from the sale to Platinum Financial Group.6
The amount or purpose of this assignment were never disclosed to the homeowner in anycontract as required by law.39. Defendants also received loan origination and broker fees on the closing of thehomes through Fortune Financial Group, LLC, because they brokered the loan for the investor.In order to obtain loans for their investors, Defendants at times misled lenders regarding theinvestor’s assets, income, occupancy, and number of properties.40. After closing, the homeowners would then become tenants of their former homesby leasing the property back from the investor who purchased it.41. For each transaction, Defendants obtained from homeowners equity rangingfrom approximately $40,000 to $140,000.42. Not one person was able to repurchase the home, in part because significantamounts of equity were stripped from the home, and the repurchase price was unreasonable.43. Some of the victims could no longer afford the rental payments on their formerhomes during the two-year lease term and they were evicted, even though the equity from thesale of their home, Defendants promised, was to be used to assist them.44. Other victims were forced to leave their homes after the investors allowed them togo to foreclosure in 2008 and 2009 as a result of the real estate market downturn and theinvestors’ having mortgages on multiple properties.45. Consequently, the victims not only lost substantial equity in their homes as aresult of this scheme, but many also lost their longtime homes.46. On November 14, 2006, for example, a victim assigned to Defendants at closing$139,235 in equity from the sale of her home, only to be evicted one year later.47. On December 8, 2006, for example, a victim assigned to Defendants at closing$103,496 in equity from the sale of her home only to be evicted in the summer of 2008 froma home in which she lived for 20 years and was raising her child.48. Defendants knowingly made a false representation as to the characteristics, uses,or benefits of foreclosure rescue services by claiming to save homeowners’ homes fromforeclosure but instead used the homeowners’ equity for personal use. Contrary to theirrepresentations to homeowners, Defendants failed to use the equity to make improvements to thehome and/or assist the homeowners in keeping the home.49. Under the guise of foreclosure rescue, Defendants induced homeowners to selltheir homes and assign substantial equity to Defendants by failing to disclose the fact, amount,and purpose of the proceed assignment, that homeowners would be permanently deprived of the7
Page 2 and 3: PARTIES2. John W. Suthers is the du
Page 4 and 5: 16. Defendants targeted and preyed
Page 8: equity in their homes; and that the
Page 11 and 12: C.R.S. § 6-1-1104(5).This is an im
Page 13 and 14: 78. Defendants were foreclosure con

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