Prince George's Fairy Tale Unravels For Woman at Center of Fraud Probe
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 26, 2007; Page A01
Joy Jenise Jackson glided down the aisle of the Mayflower Hotel ballroom wearing her handmade oriental silk wedding gown and tiara with Swarovski crystal rhinestones. Trailing her was a 42-foot train, it, too, adorned with bling.
The June 2006 reception was equally glitzy, captured, like the wedding, on video. Patti LaBelle serenaded Jackson, 39, a former exotic dancer turned mortgage broker, and her groom, Kurt Fordham, 38. Later, the video shows the couple and their 360 guests sipping Mo�t and Cristal champagne and dining on lobster and shrimp fried rice, followed by four wedding cakes. As gifts, the couple gave one of their attendants a Porsche, another a house, and a third a $10,000 check, wedding guests said.
  Last
summer, Joy Jenise Jackson and Kurt Fordham hosted 360 guests at their
$800,000 wedding. Jackson faces allegations of defrauding homeowners. (Courtesy Of Chris Duncan) Who's Blogging?Read what bloggers are saying about this article.
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The price tag for the nuptials, Jackson told friends, was nearly $800,000.
It was a fairy tale wedding born of a booming real estate market. But even as Jackson was basking in her platinum wedding, her dreams and those of hundreds of homeowners in the Washington area were crumbling around them -- just like the market.
Investigators and attorneys say it appears that Jackson paid for her wedding and her lavish lifestyle, in part, with money from an elaborate foreclosure rescue business she operated out of her Lanham-based Metropolitan Money Store Corp.
Last month, a class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of homeowners who say they have collectively lost as much as $60 million in home equity through her business.
"Joy Jackson concocted a scheme to defraud people," said Phillip Robinson, an attorney who filed the federal suit against Jackson, Fordham and 12 other defendants. "The sole motive seemed to be to enrich her lavish lifestyle. She took from people who were cash poor but were equity rich."
The red-hot real estate market of the past few years created billions in home equity for owners and opened up credit to those who thought they could never afford a home. But it also opened the door for foreclosure rescue operations, such as Metropolitan's, that require homeowners to turn over their deeds and, in effect, their equity to the lender.
Attorneys suing Jackson's company say as many as 400 homeowners lost at least $100,000 in equity. Some are now facing foreclosure.
Darrin Blackford, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service's Washington field office, said the agency is investigating Metropolitan for possible fraud, but he would comment no further. The FBI is also investigating the company, a law enforcement source said.
David Schickner, an investigator with the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, said the agency has been looking into Metropolitan since November 2006.
Jackson and Fordham did not respond to requests from The Washington Post for comment; they have moved out of their Fort Washington house, and efforts to locate them were not successful. Jackson's business partner, Jennifer McCall, did not return calls for comment, and a man who answered the door at her Lanham home said she would not comment.
A longtime friend of Jackson's, Earl Bannister Jr. defended her, saying she is guilty of nothing more than working hard and trying to help others.
"I know Joy's not like that. She will be vindicated," said Bannister, a Baltimore-based clothing designer who created Jackson's wedding gown and, earlier, her exotic dancing costumes. "Any money she got, she earned."
Last
summer, Joy Jenise Jackson and Kurt Fordham hosted 360 guests at their
$800,000 wedding. Jackson faces allegations of defrauding homeowners. (Courtesy Of Chris Duncan) Who's Blogging?Read what bloggers are saying about this article.
Most Blogged About Articles |
Chris Duncan, 25, a former Metropolitan employee from District Heights, said his boss started out with good intentions but got in over her head.
"She was an ex-stripper who became a millionaire," Duncan said. "She started overspending and tried to move money around, and it wasn't covering the spread."
Kevin Schwapp doesn't need much prodding to remember Jackson's tenure at his nightclub in Temple Hills.
With her long hair and shapely figure, Jackson was one of his most popular dancers, earning well over $1,500 a week in tips, said Schwapp, who owns the Legend Nightclub. He said Jackson danced under the name "Night Rider" from 1997 to 2003. One of her most memorable stunts involved riding in on a white stallion, a la Lady Godiva.
"She was very popular, very creative," he said. "She stood out."
It wasn't just the patrons who noticed Jackson's act. Kurt Fordham, a popular disc jockey in Prince George's clubs, liked her, too, and the two started dating.
Jackson eventually stopped dancing to focus on her career as a loan officer, moving from one mortgage firm to another. In September 2004, she teamed with McCall, 46, to open Metropolitan. They advertised on gospel and R&B radio stations and other African American media outlets, promising to help homeowners with cash-flow and credit problems.
Veronica Savoy was two months behind in mortgage payments on her Waldorf home when she contacted Metropolitan in summer 2006.
She said the firm promised to keep her home from going into foreclosure and to get her a mortgage with a lower interest rate. She signed on. Now the deed is no longer in her name, and $100,000 in equity is gone, she said.
"I guess that's where the equity in my home went," Savoy said after hearing about Jackson's big day. "It went to her wedding."
Investigators say Jackson and McCall ran a sophisticated foreclosure rescue operation that included family and friends, many of whom Jackson taught the ins and outs of the real estate industry.
Last
summer, Joy Jenise Jackson and Kurt Fordham hosted 360 guests at their
$800,000 wedding. Jackson faces allegations of defrauding homeowners. (Courtesy Of Chris Duncan) Who's Blogging?Read what bloggers are saying about this article.
Most Blogged About Articles |
Essentially, the company would enlist investors with strong credit as "straw buyers" who would take ownership of the houses. The original homeowners could live rent-free for a year and then buy back their homes at the end of the year.
But when the homes passed to the straw buyer, Metropolitan would borrow as much as possible against the value, effectively siphoning out the equity and increasing the cost of the house, according to the suit. The original owners were often unable to repurchase their property; some said they were unaware they were signing over their deeds.
Industry officials say this is a risky business model that depends on the company handling the equity properly and depositing mortgage payments regularly, something federal investigators are examining in this case.
Duncan recalled acting as a "babysitter" with clients, talking to them when they called in a panic, assuring them the process was going smoothly even when closings took far longer than at most banks.
He said he believes that Jackson and McCall were in business to keep people from losing their homes. "Joy Jackson was doing a great justice in early 2006 for the community in regard to saving individuals' homes," Duncan said.
She was also making money -- and spending it.
Jackson and Fordham moved into an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Fort Washington, blocks from retired boxer Riddick Bowe and other affluent African Americans. The couple began renovating the four-bedroom colonial, adding Versace marble floors and carpet, according to a real estate listing. They tried to cut down trees and add a swimming pool but met resistance from the neighborhood association.
Neighbors knew little about the couple but said signs of conspicuous consumption were everywhere. Eight cars were regularly parked outside their home, including a Jaguar, a Porsche, a Corvette and a Cadillac Escalade, several neighbors said. Fordham was seen each day outside wiping down his vehicles and moving them from space to space, neighbors said. A limousine arrived daily to take Jackson's 15-year-old son to a nearby private school.
"We knew when they came on the street they had a lot of drama. They weren't friendly at all," neighbor Roger Liggins said. "It was always about them."
It was a partly cloudy summer day when Jackson, Fordham and their guests took over the Mayflower Hotel. Booking a wedding at the downtown hotel, especially in June, is never an inexpensive venture. The couple reserved a majority of the Mayflower's halls and banquet centers for their wedding ceremony and reception and 56 rooms for the night of the wedding.
Aside from LaBelle -- who gave a seven-song concert with "Lady Marmalade" as her finale -- gospel harpist Jeff Majors and R&B crooner Raheem DeVaughn performed, as did a Howard University choir.
Last
summer, Joy Jenise Jackson and Kurt Fordham hosted 360 guests at their
$800,000 wedding. Jackson faces allegations of defrauding homeowners. (Courtesy Of Chris Duncan) Who's Blogging?Read what bloggers are saying about this article.
Most Blogged About Articles |
At one point during the reception, shown on the video, Jackson stood in the middle of the dance floor as the master of ceremonies encouraged guests to bring their "dollars, fives, tens, twenties, fifties and hundreds. It's the Money Store, baby."
One man showered Jackson with dozens of bills as she stood under the cascading dollars. Meanwhile, Fordham appears in the video sitting behind her at a table counting and straightening the bills brought to him in a sack. The nuptials were later featured in a wedding advertisement in The Washington Post Magazine.
The good fortune wouldn't last.
Already, the real estate market had turned sour, making the foreclosure recovery business difficult, even when the process was working properly.
Investigators are looking into whether Jackson's company actually used the equity it drew out of homes to make the promised mortgage payments. Some of that money was shared with Fordham's investment company, Fordham & Fordham, according to investigators. State law prohibits foreclosure consultants from investing in firms that are owned by family members.
"I would say Joy Jackson got into a position where she was not able to keep her promises," Duncan, the former employee, said. "Her intent was good, but the sky started falling."
By the end of summer 2006, Metropolitan had begun to lay off employees. It stopped airing ads. Duncan said he realized something was wrong when he returned to his office one October afternoon and found employees having a "shredding party." All the documents on his desk, he said, were missing.
The company shut down in December.
In May, Jackson and Fordham put their house on Glasgow Court, with its designer carpet and marble floors, on the market.
In early June, an "estate sale" sign went up: Beds, expensive lamps, jewelry, designer clothes, even a rack of fur coats were for sale, neighbors said.
Last month, the house went into foreclosure.
Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
© 2007 The Washington Post Company
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