So, who did the deed? Milwaukee woman says she never sold her old house

Facing foreclosure and bankruptcy, Neva Swims had a simple plan for the house she owned on N. 45th St. — she was just going to walk away and let the bank take it without a fight.

She did not plan on Gathan Anderson, a friend and disgraced ex-real estate broker, trying to engineer the sale of her property for $1,000 to Inner City Development Project Inc., a largely inactive nonprofit group.

Later that day, a deed filed in the courthouse indicates the house was sold again for $8,000 to a second entity — Saving Street Souls Inc. Records show both deeds were drafted and signed by Anderson, who listed himself as the agent for both groups.

But Inner City Development didn't own the property.

Neither did Swims.

And the bank that did knew nothing about it.

It was another tale of people gaming the system by selling or renting properties they have no interest in.

MORE:Dream rental turns into house of horror for woman conned by bogus landlord

Swims, 50, had spent thousands of dollars improving the house and raised two children there over nearly two decades. She continued to rent the house out for a time after moving to a new place, but abandoned it when facing the foreclosure. 

JPMorgan Chase filed the foreclosure action in March 2016, but did not take title to the house until April 17 of this year — four days before a deed purporting to show Swims sold it herself was signed. 

"That's not my damn signature," Swims told Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters after they showed her a copy of a deed in which somebody signed her name.

Indeed, the hand-printed version of her name below the signature was misspelled as Swimms, with two m's.

"I ain't signed nothing," Swims said during a half-hour interview at her current home on the city's northwest side. 

Though she lost the house in a foreclosure and sheriff's sale days before the paperwork was filed, Swims was clearly infuriated that the house was priced at such a deep discount. 

"Are you serious?" Swims exclaimed when told the deed claims she was paid $1,000 for the property — a payment she said she never received. "The door is worth almost $1,000 on the front. Oh my God, he was trying to play me."

The deeds stating the property was sold twice are known as a quit claim deeds.

In a quit claim transaction, the seller agrees to sell any interest he may or may not have in a property. A warranty deed, on the other hand, guarantees a buyer is receiving a clean title to a property. 

Theoretically, a person can use a quit claim deed to sell their nonexistent interest in the Brooklyn Bridge.  

Chase Bank remains the owner of the property that it purchased with the approval of Milwaukee County Circuit Court. The bank's deed was filed with the Register of Deeds on April 24 — just 32 minutes before the deed claiming Swims had sold the house to Inner City Development was filed.

Swims paid about $43,000 for the four-bedroom house in 1997 and it is currently assessed at $51,200, according to city and county records. Swims estimated that a landlord could charge a monthly rent of about $1,000.

Past problems

Swims' former house is one of at least three properties that records indicate were bought or sold by Inner City Development using quit claim deeds in deals Anderson engineered, a Journal Sentinel investigation found.

Anderson, 44, gave up his real estate broker's license under pressure from regulators in 2014, and is under investigation by Milwaukee police. He was arrested on suspicion of fraud in late September and spent two days in jail, but charges have not been filed. The investigation is continuing and sources say it involves numerous property sales.

MORE:Disgraced ex-real estate broker Gathan Anderson arrested on suspicion of theft by fraud

Last month, Robert Yorker, a 66-year-old retired factory worker sued Anderson and Inner City Development charging that a house he owned had twice been sold for $7,000 by the group. Anderson signed the deeds as the agent for Inner City Development.

MORE:Company linked to disgraced former real estate broker accused of fake home sales

Even the City of Milwaukee appears to have had a property it owns "sold" without its knowledge, city and county records show. 

That property, in the 2100 block of S. Fifth Place, was seized by the city in a tax foreclosure in June 2016. One year later, on June 12, 2017, Inner City Development Project sold it to Reggie Nash for $4,000, according to a quit claim deed filed with the county.

Nash feels betrayed.

He was buying the house for his ex-wife and the couple's two children. Nash said he went to Anderson because Anderson claimed to run a nonprofit that bought and sold properties that had been foreclosed on by the city.

It wasn't until after Nash paid the $4,000 and got the keys to the house that he called the city because he saw the property was still being listed for sale by the city.

"That's when he found out everything that we know now," said Claudia Nash, his ex-wife. "We have no house and (we're) out $4,000."

Officials in the treasurer's office and the Department of City Development said they were unaware that somebody with no interest in the house was trying to sell it.

"It's interesting how they could do that without having ownership," Deputy City Treasurer Jim Klajbor said when told of the supposed sale by the Journal Sentinel. "With a quit claim deed it's always buyer beware."

Kevin Sullivan, an assistant city attorney, said the so-called sale has no effect on the city's ownership of the property. 

Sullivan, Klajbor and City Treasurer Spencer Coggs each said they are not aware of anybody ever using a quit claim deed to try to sell a city property without the city's knowledge.

"I'm aware anecdotally that there are people in the city doing this sort of thing" with privately owned properties, Sullivan said, adding that doing so "is obviously fraud."

Paperwork shows problems

At the heart of these deals involving Anderson is Inner City Development Project, which in its filings claims to be based at 2803 N. Teutonia Ave.

That's the location of Coffee Makes You Black, a popular eatery.

Bradley Thurman, an owner of the restaurant and the building, said it has been several years since Inner City has been active or had permission to use his building's address. 

"They don't use that address anymore ... it's been a couple of years since they had changed the address," said Thurman.

He noted his brother, Eugene Thurman, had been a driving force in Inner City Development until his death in 2013. 

Thurman said he did not realize that as recently as last year the group listed his building address on documents filed with the state Department of Financial Institutions, or that the group's name was appearing on real estate deals.

"What it sounds like to me is there was a rogue operation by one or two people when they got into real estate and that's probably what it amounted to," said Thurman, who was a board member of the once-active Inner City Development operation. 

Founded in the 1960s, Inner City Development was a key player in the local war on poverty and a driving force on social justice and civil rights. Its causes included housing, inmate rights and helping treatment of drug addicts. 

By the 2000s, it had become less active, missing filing dates with corporate regulators and eventually losing its tax-exempt status in 2015 when the IRS stripped it of its standing as a charitable group for failing to file required financial documents.

State records show the group hasn't filed income tax returns in at least four years.

The contact person for Inner City Development is listed in the group's most recent annual report as Amun Bordain. He hung up when contacted by the Journal Sentinel and did not respond to emails.

Anderson was a board member in 2010, according to the group's filings with the state. He rejoined the board in 2016, the records show.

Thurman recalled a dispute between Anderson and other board members that resulted in his leaving the board. Thurman said he did not recall the details. 

Anderson did not return calls or respond to a note left at his Milwaukee home.

Ministry left in the lurch

In the case of Swims' house, Inner City Development tried to sell the property to Saving Street Souls, a ministry created by Henry Redd, the founder of Redd's Snapper seafood restaurants in Milwaukee. 

Redd, 67, said the mission of his group is to provide a variety of services, including housing for veterans, the homeless and recently released convicts.

"I was a victim," Redd said. 

Redd said he gave Anderson two guaranteed checks, one for $3,000 and the second for $5,000, to buy the house, which he planned to use to provide housing to veterans.

But after seeing somebody living in the house he thought he had bought, Redd said he demanded his money back. 

He was able to stop payment on the $3,000 check. He said the remaining money was repaid, in small increments, when he threatened to call authorities or go to court. He said he received the last payment on Oct. 11. 

"They say the lessons you learn that cost you the most, that are the most painful, you learn the most from," said Redd. "I got burned because of my ignorance."

The sales to Inner City Development and Saving Street Souls were done without the knowledge of Chase Bank, the lender that foreclosed on the property.

"We don’t see these schemes often, but when we do they generally fall apart," Chase spokeswoman Christine Holevas said in an email.

In August, a Milwaukee County circuit judge issued  an order  directing the sheriff to assist the bank in evicting any tenants from the property.

Swims said she recently saw some of her old 45th St. neighbors and they told her "there's people moving in and out and in and out."

News of the property sales caught Swims by surprise, but she said she was familiar with the workings of a quit claim deed.

Her guide: Gathan Anderson. 

"He tried to get me to do a quit (claim) deed," Swims said. "I said, 'No, I'm not going to do that.'"

The conversation came up when she told Anderson, a friend of 16 years, about her financial woes and her desire to stop being a landlord. Swims filed for bankruptcy in 2016.

"I was telling him what I was going through with the house," she said. "He brought the paper in.

"He wanted me to just sign it and he'd fill out everything."

She refused.

Read the investigation

To read past stories in the Journal Sentinel's Landlord Games investigation, go to jsonline.com/landlordgames.