Federal prosecutors allege Ronnie Dukes and his team — which included at least one former stripper — ripped off mortgage companies of at least $100 million, turning nearly 200 Metro Detroit homes into cash machines to buy luxury cars, vacations, a night club and even a helicopter, according to Mike Wilkinson in the Detroit News.
Nearly five years after the FBI began investigating, Duke and his associates have begun pleading guilty and are being sentenced to long prison terms. But for those swept up in his scheme, the damage lingers. An estimated four in five Duke deals resulted in a foreclosed home, hammering values in neighborhoods — from Grosse Ile to Fenton — already reeling from the recession.
In many neighborhoods, homes involved in the scheme are long abandoned. As people moved out, the weeds grew up and vermin moved in.
"It just keeps getting worse and worse," Sandra Fatt, who built a Northville Township home in 1987 that she sold to a Duke associate in 2005, told Wilkinson. Duke has been tied to two mortgages on the property that have left a murky ownership trail no one has been able to solve.
