Victims of Mortgage Scam Home for the Holidays With Benefactor’s Aid

LOS ANGELES — When she lost her home to a Bible-toting huckster, Joan Pierre had seen the very darkest side of human nature. The swindler had even knelt down and prayed with her as he cheated her out of $16,000.

But Pierre says she never lost her faith in the basic goodness of people, even when authorities came to evict her family. And last week, her faith was finally rewarded.

Thanks in large measure to the kindness of an anonymous donor she will probably never meet, Pierre moved back in to the southwest Los Angeles home where she has lived 17 years.

“I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it!” the 54-year-old postal clerk cried out as she walked up to the door. She embraced Camilla Blair, the Inglewood real estate agent who together with the donor helped her buy the property back. “I was just lost.”

Pierre had been one of many victims of Timothy Barnett, a self-styled loan broker notorious in South Los Angeles for preying on debt-troubled homeowners.

Barnett defrauded Pierre into thinking she was refinancing her home, when in fact he was keeping the money and her mortgage was going unpaid. As a result, she lost title to her home and was evicted Oct. 20.

Last month, Barnett was sentenced to nine years in state prison on 14 counts of fraud, but that did little to help Pierre--she still lost the title to her home.

Sheriff’s deputies came to evict her. “They said I had to leave. They locked the door.”

Pierre and her family spent one night in her tiny car. Then she moved into a nearby Howard Johnson’s while her two grandchildren and daughter-in-law moved in with friends. Her granddaughter, Xiomara, 7, wrote a letter to Santa Claus asking for the house to be returned by Christmas.

Santa didn’t answer right away, but someone else did. An anonymous donor stepped forward after reading about the family’s plight in The Times. Through Blair, he lent Pierre $40,000, enough for her to buy her house back from the bank that had claimed it in foreclosure.

“I call him Joan’s Guardian Angel,” Blair said.

Indeed, on Wednesday at least, it seemed that a higher power was looking out for Pierre and her family.

Just as she stepped out of her car to take back the keys to her tan stucco home, the fierce rains of the morning stopped. The sun burst briefly through the clouds.

“Isn’t that wonderful,” Blair said.

Pierre, her two grandchildren and her elderly aunt, Inez Joseph, lingered on the lawn awhile, embracing Blair, happily posing for pictures the real estate agent insisted on taking. Soon, Yvonne Fleming walked over from her house a couple of doors down to say hello.

“I’m happy to have my neighbor back, especially such a good neighbor,” said Fleming, who had been keeping an eye on the home while the family was away. “Good neighbors are hard to find.”

Once the door was unlocked, Pierre’s grandchildren--Xiomara and Lance, 9--rushed inside. “The fridge is still working,” Lance called out. Then he turned on the family computer. It worked too.

Pierre walked through the kitchen and inspected the bedrooms as if she had just purchased the home for the first, and not the second, time.

Finally, she sat at her dining room table and sifted through a stack of mail that included several bills and a red-letter “Notice of Eviction” that had been posted on the front door.

Asked about Barnett and what she felt about him now that she had returned home, Pierre paused for a moment to mull over her answer.

“I’m sorry for him and hope that now that he’s [in jail] he has time to think,” she said. “I hope that he wouldn’t do something like that again. I don’t want to think evil of him.”

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Barnett has had more than a few run-ins with the law. In 1993, The Times detailed how he had been sued by dozens of customers for allegedly stealing their money or property. In 1994, the district attorney’s office charged him with grand theft and other crimes.

He defrauded Pierre while out on bail on other charges, telling her that he could lower her monthly mortgage payments from $1,689 to $461.

“When something is too good to be true, you should know better,” Pierre said ruefully.

Barnett pleaded no contest in November month to defrauding Pierre.

“The hardest part for all of us was that he did it in the name of the Lord,” Blair said. “It’s hard not to trust a man who’s quoting the Bible.”

Blair added that Barnett and his scam were well known in South Los Angeles real estate circles. “We all thought that he was in jail.”

“Cheating is cheating. And cheating is wrong,” Pierre said. “If he’s sick, maybe he’ll have time to heal himself and change.”

Everyone present agreed that they should forget about Barnett and his crimes. “We shouldn’t dwell on the negative,” Blair said.

Pierre was able to buy back her home with the anonymous loan and a larger one from Budget Finance. Not long after she had begun to move back in, one of the company’s loan officers, Richard Dobbs, showed up with a grocery bag.

He pulled out an apple pie, followed by a box of stuffing and two cans of cranberry sauce. And finally, the piece de resistance: a baked ham.

Pierre held the ham up and smiled broadly.

For the first time in months, she was having a very good day.