Ex-NBAer Leaves Adoptive Mom Homeless; Duped Her Into Signing Over Home, Failed To Make Payments On Subsequent Financing, Resulting In Foreclosure

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Detroit News reports:

• Rumeal Robinson got famous for his performance under pressure -- two free throws with three seconds left in overtime to clinch Michigan's 1989 NCAA basketball championship.(1) But the Cambridge, Mass., public school security officer who raised Robinson after finding him abandoned at age 10 says he has fallen far from the image of someone you can count on. Helen Ford, 65, took Robinson into her home, and accuses him of cheating her out of her house.(2)

• Ford cried while describing to a Detroit News reporter how she was evicted in April from the home on Rumeal Robinson Way in Cambridge where she and her deceased husband Louis raised nine children and provided temporary care to many more. "I didn't know I was signing my house over. I thought I was taking out a mortgage because my son asked me for help," Ford said. "He said he would make the payments and I thought all these years he was making the payments until the constable came and told me I was being evicted."

• She unwittingly signed papers in 2003 that sold the home for $600,000. The property has since changed three times and finally went into foreclosure. Her attorney bought time for her to remain in the home, but he now is uncertain if there is any way to get the place back.

• Ford lives in a two-bedroom apartment. She said she doesn't sleep well because, for the first time in her life, she is alone. She had raised five of her own, four adopted children and provided temporary care for many more foster children in the five-bedroom house. She was honored for her dedication during the halftime of a Boston Celtics game in 2006.

For more, see U-M hoops hero Rumeal Robinson accused of swindling mom, others.

In a related story, see Broward-Palm Beach New Times: That's Foul (Hoops hero Rumeal Robinson blew a fortune on strippers, got indicted, and left his mom homeless).

(1) According to the story, his famous free throws downed Seton Hall, 80-79, and landed Robinson on the cover of Sports Illustrated. His adoptive parents accompanied him to the 1990 National Basketball Association draft in New York, where he was selected 10th overall in the first round by the Atlanta Hawks. He never lived up to expectations, and ended up literally bouncing around the NBA, playing for the New Jersey Nets, Charlotte Hornets, Portland Trail Blazers, Los Angeles Lakers and Phoenix Suns, the story states.

(2) No stranger to accusations of real estate hanky panky, Robinson was indicted by federal authorities in Iowa for his part in an alleged swindle of more than $2 million involving a proposed resort development called Harmony Cove in his native Jamaica. He was released last month on $50,000 bond, the story states. DeedContraTheft