Wedgewood, Inc., PBR Asset Management, BSI Financial Services, DLI Properties, Strategic Realty Stole the Home Located at 24242 Cruise Circle Dr. Canyon Lake, California 92587
In 2005 Craig and Debbie met on Match.com in February 2005. Their first date was at Tortilla Flats on the Mission Viejo Lake in California. They searched for their dream home in Canyon Lake, California moving in the home August 8, 2005. The home is located at 24242 Cruise Circle Dr. Canyon Lake, California. The home was a lease option to buy. Approximately October 2006 they started procedures to purchase the home closing escrow in February 2007. Over the next couple of years the home loan would be sold. The home loan was originally with People’s Choice and then they sold the loan to GMAC Mortgage.
Around the beginning of 2010 the home loan was sold to an investor that purchased bulk home loans. The companies name is PBR Asset Management and the President is David Wehrly and Vice President Greg Geiser. The goal is to flip a home earning a minimum of $100,000 per home. Use any means to flip the home even if the homeowner is current on their home loan. This company doesn’t want home loans, they just want to foreclose on homes and then flip the home. PBR Asset Management is a division of Wedgewood Inc. in Redondo Beach, California. Wedgewood is known as the largest home flipper business in the United States. They are also known as Eagle Vista Equities, Maxim Properties etc.
In 2010 when PBR Asset Management acquired the home loan one of the representatives came to 24242 Cruise Circle and mentioned to Craig and Debbie when would they be moving. The home was purchased as a retirement home and Craig and Debbie never had any intentions of moving. Then they were told that PBR doesn’t want the loan and they need to refinance or have a family member pay off the home loan. Being in their 50’s and approaching 60 it was the perfect home for their life style and business. The homes in Canyon Lake in Riverside County are much more reasonably priced then Orange County where they grew up at and lived many years. Canyon Lake has a private lake so they could have a waterfront home and have their boat in a dock in back of their home and they could park their motorhome they use for business in the driveway. In South Orange County most neighborhoods have an HOA and RV’s or boats are not allowed to be parked in the driveway.
Once PBR Asset Management took over took over the fixed 30 year mortgage and Craig and Debbie had no intentions of moving PBR had mortgage service companies that specialize in foreclosures service the home loan. FCI in Anaheim Hills, California was one. It was easy for Craig and Debbie to go in person and pay their house payment. Many times paying $400 over the amount due in hopes to pay the home off sooner.
Then in April 2012 PBR had BSI Financial Services in Pennsylvania started serving the home loan. Looking at the Consumer Affairs website complaints about BSI and their reputation of foreclosing on homes, lack of customer service all payments would now be made with a Bank of America cashier’s check and sent 2 Day Air UPS and BSI would have to sign receiving the checks.
From the beginning BSI had been a nightmare. Accounting on statements was always incorrect, phone tag. Always having to review payment sent and payments that they had cashed. In December 2012 it was reviewed regarding all payments were made from April 2012 through December 2012. In 2013 12 payments were made to BSI. Approximately July 2013 when the home loan was current BSI and PBR filed a Default on the home. BSI continued to accept and cash payments until November 2013. In December 2013 and January 2014 BSI returned the Bank of America cashier’s checks they received and signed for uncashed and would refuse future payments unless thousands of dollars were paid to them in penalties and payments that weren’t owed.
An attorney was hired in 2014. BSI and PBR keep dragging the case with demurrers, oppositions etc. costing Craig and Debbie thousands in attorney fees. Since the lawsuit battle has continued now for 2 years the judge allowed the home to be foreclosed on and auctioned off. The homes was auctioned off February 17, 2016. The buyer at the auction is a friend of Wedgewood Inc. which is DLI Properties also known as Strategic Acquisitions and Strategic Realty. These companies each have over 20 California corporations and buy and sell each other’s inventory of foreclosed homes to flip.
This is happening to many homeowners. They are current on their home loans and are losing them to foreclosure so these house flipping companies can earn billions of dollars, live the high life and even live in 14 million dollar homes and the hard working middle class homeowner loses their home. Then the homeowner has a foreclosure on their record, may have filed a bankruptcy only to try and save their home but be denied the bankruptcy due to the opposition of the investor’s attorney which then makes the homeowners homeless even unable to get a good rental. In this case after Craig and Debbie lived in their home 10 ½ years, house payments were current until BSI and PBR refused house payment, spent thousands in attorney fees once the house was auctioned off the new buyer house flipper investor gave them a 7 day eviction notice.
Please help us stop this. There is a good case here with good evidence. This case needs to go before a jury trial. But the attorney fees are ongoing monthly but this home can still be saved from white collar house stealing crimes. Animal Abuse is a Felony but our government is not doing anything to these White Collar House Thieves which the government agencies have received thousands of complaints about these house flipping crimes. We have to show house flippers, investors, us homeowners will not condone when we make our house payments to lose our homes, we expect to keep our home. We will not tolerate those that choose a living of being an investor you can not foreclose on our homes when we make our house payments. Not all bulk loans that are sold from our major lending institutions are Defaults but in fact Current. If these investors don’t want home loans they should not purchase bulk home loans. Then need to get in another kind of business. Maybe try investing and making homes rental properties instead of just flipping homes in a short period of time earning $100,000 plus of each home.
If you can't win a lawsuit against Wrongful Foreclosure proving you made house payments with Bank of America cashier's checks and sent 2 Day Air UPS and the loan company signed they received the checks and cashed them impossible for anyone to win. Then these White Collar House Thieves Win!
Auction Day of 24242 Cruise Circle Dr. Canyon Lake, California 92587. Owed on loan approximately $390,000. Auctioned off for $390,000. Houses selling that are similar in the area $400,000 to $450,000. Strategic Realty is listing it for $515,000.
24242 Cruise Circle Dr. Canyon Lake, California Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Wedgewood-PBR-BSI-Stole-My-Home-228992844156064/
Please Note a Similar Story to Craig and Debbie
Wedgewood Inc. of Redondo Beach, California does it again and steals another families home.
Wedgewood Inc. thinks home foreclosures that include homeowners that were current on their home loans by flipping houses states “distressed market” is “hot and sexy” and “new and trendy.”
Huffington Post March 27, 2016
Speaking at a real estate conference last September in Florida, Greg Geiser, CEO of Wedgewood Inc., an investment company headquartered in Redondo Beach, California, claimed that his firm is the biggest “fix and flip” company in the country. He said the company purchases about 250 foreclosed or about-to-be-foreclosed homes a month. Geiser told the audience that the “distressed market” is “hot and sexy” and “new and trendy.”
But for many families, Wedgewood’s business practices are the cause of much distress. One of them is the Caamal family in Rialto, California, a working class suburb near Los Angeles. Wedgewood is trying to evict Mercedes and Pablo Caamal from their modest house, where they have lived for ten years and in which they have invested their life savings to purchase and improve.
Faced with eviction notices, most Americans pack up their clothing, furniture, and other belongings and try to find another place to live, often doubling-up with another family or confront the harsh reality of homelessness.
But the Caamals are fighting back. They and their supporters have launched an around-the-clock vigil in front of the home, awaiting San Bernardino County Sheriff deputies to try to evict them, and pledging to stay in their home or face arrest.
“I’m not willing to walk away from a home I worked my whole life to buy,” explained Pablo Caamal, a 63-year old cook.
Headlines claim that the country is now “recovering” from the housing crash brought on by Wall Street banks’ risky and reckless practices, but millions of American homeowners are still facing foreclosure and eviction through no fault of their own. Wedgewood’s business strategy is to prey on these families, buy the homes at deep discounts, and make a quick profit selling them on the market.
Because Wedgewood is a privately-held company, it is not required to disclose its revenues or the compensation of its executives. But Geiser has obviously done quite well for himself in the “fix and flip” business. The 58-year old Geiser lives at 212 Morningside Drive in Manhattan Beach in a home valued at $5.7 million, according to Zillow. David R. Wehrly, Wedgewood’s 54-year old Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, lives in a $14 million home at 112 The Strand in Manhattan Beach.
The Caamals don’t live in such splendor, but they achieved their own version of the American Dream. They came to the United States from Mexico in the 1970s and are American citizens. Mercedes, 58, and Pablo have both worked at cooks in local restaurants. They purchased the house at 1805 North Willow Avenue in Rialto in 2006. They have five children who are pursuing successful lives. Their 19 year old daughter Daisy is a full-time college student in San Francisco who supports herself by working in a restaurant. Their 23 year old daughter Merari is also a college student who lives at home and works part time in a warehouse. Elizabeth, their 27 year old daughter, also lives at home and works in the same cafeteria, at Cal State-San Bernardino, as her parents. Their 32 year old son Moises and 35 year old daughter Christy are married and live with their respective families.
But in 2010, at the height of the economic crisis, the Caamals’ dream started to become a nightmare. Both Mercedes and Pablo were laid off from their jobs at cooks at a local private college cafeteria. They quickly found new jobs and, like many Americans struggling to make ends meet during the economic hard times, applied for a loan modification with Wells Fargo. The bank immediately granted a temporary modification.
The Caamals never missed a payment on their mortgage, but Wells Fargo nevertheless denied their request for a permanent modification and then began returning their payments.
This, too, is an experience that millions of Americans have faced, because Congress failed to require banks to participate in loan modifications (including a tool called “principal reduction”) as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank bank reform law designed to prevent the kind of predatory lending practices that brought the country to the brink of economic collapse.
After Wells Fargo put the home up for sale at an auction, Wedgewood — which purchases and sells foreclosed properties around the country — bought the Caamals’ home last September for $284,000. After the Caamals and their supporters held a protest at Wedgewood’s headquarters, the company reluctantly agreed to hold off on eviction long enough for the family to secure financing for a loan to repurchase the home.
But Wedgewood reneged on its promise and demanded that the Caamals pay $375,000 for the home they are still living in. The Caamals say they are willing to pay that price — and have qualified for a mortgage to make the payments — but Wedgewood has refused their offer.
“Why is Wedgewood evicting us, when we’re offering to give them a $100,000 profit on their investment?” Mercedes Caamal said. “I don’t understand why they won’t accept our money.”
On Thursday, with the help of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), a community organizing group, the Caamals, along with the family, friends, neighbors and ACCE members pitched tents outside the house and launched an around-the-clock vigil to demand that the eviction be stopped. They say they won’t leave and are willing to risk arrest.
The Caamals and their supporters visited the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s headquarters, where representatives of Sheriff John McMahon accepted a letter requesting that the department refuse to carry out the unfair eviction. The Sheriff’s Department notified the family that starting after 6:00 am on Friday would arrive to evict them. But when Sheriff’s deputies came to the house twice on Friday, and saw local news media covering the vigil, the law enforcement officers did not try to evict the family.
The Caamals and ACCE are asking supporters to call Geiser at (310) 640-3070, or email him at greg@wedgewood-inc.com, to urge him to sell the home back to the family.
Geiser founded Wedgewood in 1985 and merged it with HMC Assets in 2014. Companies like Wedgewood are often called “bottom feeders.” They buy homes at short sales and foreclosure auctions and sell them at huge profits. Reflecting its business philosophy, the company has a huge Monopoly board on a wall at its headquarters at 2015 Manhattan Beach Boulevard in Redondo Beach.
The company website proudly explains how Geiser got into the business. After earning his master’s degree from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management in 1982, he purchased a Pasadena home, sight unseen, at a foreclosure auction.
“While still in the parking lot at the auction, Greg sold the house to a young couple who said it was their dream home, but they didn’t have the cash for the auction,” according to the website. Excited by the world of real estate speculation, Geiser started Wedgewood, which now has over 250 employees. The company claims to be “a leader in the field of distressed residential real estate, specializing in the acquisition, rehabilitation, and resale of single family homes.”
Not surprisingly, Geiser and his company are staunch Republicans, since the GOP has fought hard in Washington, D.C. against laws requiring lenders to modify mortgages and stem the epidemic of foreclosures. In recent year, Wedgewood’s employees have made over $231,000 in political contributions, almost all of it to Republican candidates, the Republican Party, and Republican-oriented PACs.
Geiser, the company’s CEO, has made $93,000 in political donations, including contributions to Mitt Romney, John Boehner, Right to Rise (Jeb Bush’s presidential PAC), and Americans for Ethical Leadership, a Republican super PAC. Wehrly, the firm’s COO, has given $86,441 in contributions, spreading his donations among many candidates, including George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, and John Boehner and, in this year’s president sweepstakes, to Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, and Marco Rubio. He also donated $1,000 to the Tea Party PAC called Our Country Deserves Better.
Geiser and Wehrly are both on the board of Prager University, a conservative website founded by the talk show host Dennis Prager. Geiser is also on the board of directors of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and of the Oklahoma State University Foundation. Wehrly donated to the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing propaganda outfit.
In recent years, ACCE and other community groups around the country have been successful not only in getting banks to halt foreclosures but also at pressuring lenders to renegotiate mortgages. But their work would be much easier if Congress required lenders — who received billions of dollars in federal bail-outs and benefit from the government’s policies to make credit available to lenders — to modify mortgages for families who were involuntarily hurt by the economic crash.
Homeowners facing foreclosure can contact ACCE organizer Peter Kuhns at (213) 272-1141 to join the movement against predatory banks and investment firms.
Peter Dreier is professor of politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. His most recent book is The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame (Nation Books).
A Working Class Family Battles a ‘Fix and Flip’ Real Estate Tycoon
Wedgewood Inc. of Redondo Beach, CA - A Working Class Family Battles a ‘Fix and Flip’ Real Estate Tycoon
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/a-working-class-family-co_b_9551862.html
Wedgewood Inc. of Redondo Beach, CA - American dream denied: Homeowners preyed upon by multi-billion dollar company
http://peoplesworld.org/american-dream-denied-homeowners-preyed-upon-by-multi-billion-dollar-company/
