Mother/Daughter Duo Face Charges In Alleged Rent Skimming Racket Screwing 30+ Now-F'closed Homeowners & Would-Be Buyers Under Bogus Rent-To-Own Deals

In Bakersfield, California, The Bakersfield Californian reports:

• A mother and daughter charged with a major scam that bilked at least 32 people out of 18 homes valued at more than $2.3 million are in jail in lieu of posting $1 million bail each, according to records in Kern County Superior Court.

• The daughter, Dawn Marie Kantin, 37, came into court Monday afternoon where she grinned at a friend in the audience. She pleaded not guilty to 44 counts of conspiracy, embezzlement, theft, notary fraud and forgery. Her mother, 69-year-old Alice Kantin, the reported owner of Desert Air Real Estate Investments, Inc. in Bakersfield, will be arraigned on the same charges Tuesday, court and jail records say.

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• Victims of the reported scam, which operated in Bakersfield between August 2007 and June 2009, were financially devastated after entrusting their homes to the Kantins, according to a sworn declaration filed by Gordon Isen of the Kern County District Attorney's Real Estate Fraud Unit.

• One listed victim, Priscilla Acosta of Bakersfield, said Monday, "I'm relieved" to hear about the arrests. "The ordeal we've been through because of her (Alice Kantin) still makes me cry. We lost our home to foreclosure which we didn't find out about until it was too late." And that's what Isen's declaration said happened to distressed homeowners of 18 houses who contracted with Kantin to take over their payments but lost their home due to foreclosure. In addition, rents paid by 14 tenants with rent-to-buy agreements evaporated when they suddenly learned the homes were in foreclosure, the declaration says.(1)

For more, see Mother, daughter face charges in alleged real estate scam.

In a related story, see KGET-TV Channel 17: Real estate fraud victim says she lost $18,000:

• A victim of the mother-daughter real estate scam run by Alice Kantin and her daughter Dawn Kantin contacted 17 News saying she was scammed out of $18,000. Janice Rios says the Kantins pocketed monthly payments and down payments for more than a year that were meant to go toward her mortgage payments.

(1) Reportedly, some tenants made downpayments toward purchase of the home, according to court reports. In one case reported by KBAK-TV, Channel 29, Jennifer Hollet and Anthony King paid $30,000 toward the purchase of a home. Hollet told Channel 29 last summer that a month after they moved in, default notices began to arrive and she and King were evicted and lost their downpayment. Assistant DA Isen asked for and received $1 million bail on each defendant, and obtained an order that prevents fraudulently obtained money from being used to post bail, the story states.