Attorney Accused Of Allowing Tenant To Move Into Unwitting Clients' Vacated Underwater Home, Then Skimming Rent; Allegedly Pocketed $20K In Section 8 Cash While Allowing Home To Fall To Foreclosure

In Bolingbrook, Illinois, The Hearld News reports:

• For more than a year, Constance Coleman complained to anyone who would listen that the lawyer who rented her a Bolingbrook home didn’t tell her the house was in foreclosure and he didn’t own the home or have permission to rent it.
  
  As Coleman continued her quest to avoid eviction and shed light on her situation, she found out that the home’s real owners, Jennifer and Steven Gibson, had no idea their house at 560 N. Pinecrest Road was rented out by attorney Joseph P. McCaffery after they moved away.
  
  The Gibsons say they believe McCaffery of Aurora purposely delayed their foreclosure so he could collect more rent money. McCaffery, who denies all of the allegations leveled against him, was hired to expedite the foreclosure case, Jennifer Gibson said.
  
  Someone finally listened to Coleman and Gibson and investigated the women’s complaints.
  
  ARDC complaint
  
  On Sept. 20, the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC) filed a complaint that alleges McCaffery rented out the home without permission.
  
  The document also claims that McCaffery misrepresented himself as the owner’s agent to the Housing Authority of Joliet to collect about $20,000 in rent from the agency’s Section 8 housing assistance program. Coleman paid an additional $8,000 in rent.
  
  The housing authority would have rejected the rental contract if it had known the property was in foreclosure and that McCaffery didn’t have permission to rent out the Pinecrest Road home, according to the ARDC complaint.
  
  The complaint also says there is evidence McCaffery “took no action to expedite the foreclosure as directed by the Gibsons.”
  
  McCaffery denies he did anything wrong. He said he told Coleman the home was in foreclosure. And he said he had power of attorney over the residence and that he collected the rent as payment for his legal services. “It gives me all power with respect to that property,” he said. “I could have sold it. I could have rented it. I could have lived in it. ... I can burn it down if I want to.”
  
  Rental nightmare
  
  Coleman’s story started back in late 2009 when she was forced to move from another Bolingbrook home because it was in foreclosure. She vowed then to stay in the neighborhood she loved and to find a place that wasn’t mired in mortgage trouble.
  
  That’s why she was thrilled when a “for rent” sign popped up in the yard of a nearby three-bedroom, brick ranch home. Coleman agreed to rent the new home on Pinecrest Road from McCaffery and a partner who said they had purchased the home in a short sale as an investment, Coleman said. “I thought it was a grace from God,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Thank you Jesus.’ ”
  
  Instead of being a blessing, the rental turned into a nightmare for Coleman. After renting the home without incident starting in January 2010, Coleman said she was shocked when she found out in April 2011 that the home was in foreclosure, she was going to be evicted and that McCaffery was not the owner.
  
  Now Coleman is being evicted because the home was sold back to the mortgage holder, CitiMortgage, in May 2011. She has until Monday to be out of the home. Because she knew it would be tough to find another home to rent, Coleman fought in court to stay in the home as long as she could, and she contacted any agency she could think of for help.
  
  But she received a mixed bag of advice from federal, state and local legal and banking agencies ranging from “sit tight” to being told to stop paying rent. “It’s so stressful. You don’t sleep. The worry is unbelievable. You just don’t want this to happen to other people.”
  
  Gibsons had ‘no idea’
  
  Jennifer Gibson said McCaffery never had permission to rent the home. “He did not do that much work for us, and he did not have permission to rent the home,” she said by phone from her new home in Wisconsin. The Gibsons left the home when Steven got a new job in Kansas and they were underwater on their Bolingbrook mortgage and couldn’t sell the house.
  
  Jennifer Gibson said she didn’t know anything was amiss until she returned to the home in June 2011 to check its condition and found all of the locks had been changed and that Coleman was living in the house. “We had no idea he (McCaffery) was renting it, and we never saw any of the money,” Gibson said.
  
  While McCaffery said the rent payments were for his work on the foreclosure, Jennifer Gibson said the lawyer received a flat payment of $2,500. She also said he didn’t seem to be expediting it as instructed. “He went for eight months without talking to us,” she said.
  
  The Gibsons weren’t the only people who didn’t know what was going on at the home. The housing authority paid its portion of the home’s rent even after the foreclosure was complete. Some of the money went to pay off an IRS lien for McCaffery’s unpaid taxes.
  
  Joyce Johnson, Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program coordinator for the housing authority, said McCaffery told the agency he was managing the property. “As soon as we found out something was going on, we stopped the payments,” Johnson said.

For more, see Bolingbrook woman facing eviction, claims attorney misled.