Iowa Couple Who Scored 'Free House' When Homestead Law Led To Void Mtg To Face Heat From State AG Probe Into Possible Fraud In Filing Loan Application

The Des Moines Register reports:

• Attorney General Tom Miller has assigned a mortgage investigator to review the case of an Ankeny couple who used a more than 100-year-old law to save their house from foreclosure after making a single payment, a spokesman said this week. Until that review is complete, "it would be premature to say what, if anything, we can do," Geoff Greenwood said.

• Matt and Jamie Danielson blamed a hasty home loan approval by their lender for ultimately being able to keep their house after they proved Jamie did not sign the mortgage in 2007. The Danielsons used that law while in foreclosure and had to make no further payments. The couple won an appeal of their foreclosure case in 2009 before the Iowa Court of Appeals.

• After the story about the Danielsons was published last week,(1) the Register learned that the couple had been involved in other home deals that state title guaranty officials called questionable.

• Inaccurate statements were also made on Matt Danielson's signed loan application. Among them: that he earned $13,000 monthly at a car wholesaler at 1234 Fifth St. in Ankeny - an address where state records show no such business exists.

For more, see State to investigate case of couple who got free house.

(1) See Iowa loophole voids mortgage, gives couple 'a free house'.