Lee Anderson never saw Georgia.

He lived in Mississippi on a narrow country road that bore his name, enduring the effects of last year's stroke and a lightning bolt that struck years before. He died Monday, just weeks shy of his 101st birthday.

CURTIS COMPTON/AJC (ENLARGE)

The duplex at 1127-1129 Ernest St. in Macon is one of six at the location that were once owned by disgraced state Rep. Ron Sailor Jr. . They are now under new ownership but uninhabitable.

John Spink/AJC (ENLARGE)

State Rep. Ron Sailor (left) and his lawyer, Bruce Maloy (right) leave court after pleading guilty to money laundering.

CURTIS COMPTON/AJC (ENLARGE)

The trashed interior of one of the Ernest Street units. Vagrants often occupy the buildings.

TIMELINE 531 Concord Street, Macon Macon condemned this house at 531 Concord St. in 2004, city records show. Sailor bought it in February 2005. On a recent day, an order to vacate lay among shards of glass from broken windows on a sagging front porch. Weeds and shrubs nearly engulfed the circa-1900 house. The city plans to demolish it. • 2/7/2005: Double Eagle Investments LLC sells the property to PRG Realty for $5,000. • 2/8/2005: PRG sells the property to Sailor for $17,000. • 5/23/2005: Sailor conveys the property to Opportunity Investments LLC with no money changing hands. • 8/29/2006: Opportunity Investments gives the property back to Sailor. • 8/31/2006: Sailor uses the property as collateral to borrow $95,000 from John Palumbo of Orlando, Fla. • 6/1/2007: Sailor gives the property to DEC 25 LLC. An attorney says he set up DEC 25 LLC at Sailor's request, but doesn't know who its owners are. • 5/2008: Palumbo said the loan has come due and he has not been paid back. RELATED LINKS: • More Metro news • Metro photo galleries

But Georgia land records suggest a more adventurous Lee Anderson — a real estate risk-taker who acquired two worn-out cinderblock duplexes in Macon in 2005, only to lose them to foreclosure.

He bought the duplexes, records say, from his granddaughter's future husband: former state Rep. Ron Sailor Jr. (D-Decatur). The disgraced legislator, who resigned in March, awaits sentencing on a federal money laundering charge.

Some of Anderson's relatives have questioned whether the sales were legitimate.

Sailor left a tangle of failed real estate deals in the wake of his collapse. Land and court records tell of a near-frenzy of buying, selling and transferring land, of borrowing and not always paying back, of succumbing to foreclosures and court judgments.

Since 2000, records show the dynamic pastor and lawmaker has defaulted on at least nine loans, amounting to nearly $1 million.

Lenders sold the Lee Anderson duplexes after payments stopped on $113,400 in mortgages.

Anderson's wife, Ruby, said in two interviews last month that her husband never agreed to buy the properties or take out loans on them. Letters about them arrived in the couple's mailbox, she said, but Sailor told her he would take care of them.

"We couldn't mess with no real estate," said Ruby, 86. "We just live on our little retirement money."

Five other family members said the signatures on the two mortgages didn't resemble Anderson's handwriting.

On Friday, a woman who said she was Ruby Anderson's daughter called a reporter and said her mother, who was grieving her husband's death, had been confused during the earlier interviews. The woman said there was "no foul play" and that her father had bought the duplexes.

She hung up when asked for details and again when a reporter called her back.

Through his attorney Bruce Maloy, Sailor declined to comment.

The duplex deal was good for Sailor. He had bought them for $30,000. About six months later, he sold them for $126,000.

A familiar name

Thanks to his father, Sailor never suffered a lack of name recognition on the campaign trail. Ron Sailor Sr. was a well-liked television and radio newscaster and Gwinnett pastor.

The son entered the public eye in 2000 when he won a DeKalb legislative seat. The 26-year-old Emory University graduate had also worked as a radio newscaster and pastor.

Just weeks after the election, Sailor dove head first into real estate, records show. Between November 2000 and March 2002, Sailor bought four condos in Lithonia, Norcross and Atlanta, and a house in Decatur, amassing mortgages worth $645,000.

All were for 30-year terms, looking much like the loans homebuyers routinely get.

He then turned his attention to Macon, where a declining population and oversupply of cheap, vacant houses had attracted investors as well as mortgage fraud. Since 2003, prosecutors there have secured more than 25 fraud convictions.

Typically, such scams involve using false information to secure loans that are greater than the collateral property is worth. But sometimes, the line between illegal deals and bad investments is not clear.

In late 2004 and early 2005, Sailor bought a house and eight squat duplexes in historic but decaying neighborhoods on Macon's south and west sides.

The buildings were in bad shape. Seven were uninhabitable — condemned and headed for demolition if they weren't repaired.

Yet they quickly became a source of cash. Sailor, his business Completed Works of Georgia LLC and two other companies borrowed money against the properties. The loans outstripped not only his purchase price, but also tax assessors' values.

Sailor and the companies transferred the properties back and forth three times in less than two years. Public records don't say why. Sometimes, no money was exchanged. Other times, the sales price — like the loans — far exceeded what he had paid.

Sailor also borrowed from an investor named Obie Bacon in 2005. The two ended up in court.

Bacon's first deal with Sailor went smoothly. Bacon loaned $100,000 in March of that year, expecting to make a $15,000 profit when Sailor repaid him in two months, according to Bacon's lawsuit.

Bacon got his money.

Then in June, he loaned Sailor another $200,000. This time, Sailor promised a $30,000 profit — plus the money back — in a month, court filings say. The two did not put the agreement in writing.

The money was supposed to help Sailor buy and rehab duplexes in Macon, Sailor wrote later.

The loan's due date came and went. Sailor made only one $10,000 payment, court filings say.

Bacon had withdrawn the money from a retirement account, thinking he could replace it before incurring tax penalties. Four months after the deadline, he sued.

He won a $328,000 judgment in 2006 after Sailor failed to respond. That year, Sailor ran unopposed for a fourth term in the Legislature.

He later offered a brief, written explanation for where Bacon's money went. "Political and economic circumstances/climate" doomed the project, he wrote.

Real estate investors sometimes loan money beyond a property's worth so buyers can fix it up and sell it for profit. But Macon officials say they issued no remodeling permits for any of Sailor's buildings while he owned them.

Through his Savannah attorney, Bacon declined to speak with a reporter.

A Florida lawyer said in a telephone interview that he is also considering legal action against Sailor over one of the Macon deals.

John Palumbo of Orlando loaned Sailor $95,000 with a 12 percent interest rate in 2006. The collateral: A dilapidated and condemned century-old Macon house that Sailor had bought for $17,000 the year before.

Sailor didn't repay the loan, which is overdue, Palumbo said. He did not require an appraisal.

"I was motivated by the fact that he was an active member of a church and he was a state legislator," Palumbo said. "All those that I know are honorable, dependable citizens, and I assumed that he was in that category."

Sailor didn't use traditional lenders for his other Macon mortgages, either.

So-called "private" or "hard money" lenders charge high interest rates for short-term loans on properties when borrowers cannot secure conventional mortgages. They look less at a borrower's credit and more at the property securing a loan, which they can seize if a debtor defaults.

For reasons unclear in public documents, Sailor and the companies were able to borrow as much as two or three times what he'd paid for the Macon properties.

For instance, he bought six condemned duplexes on Ernest Street for $65,000 in January 2005. Less than four months later, with no remodeling permits issued, he sold them as three separate lots to his own company for $64,000 apiece — $192,000 in total.

Henry County real estate agent Ruby Letendre, who financed one of the sales with a $67,000 loan, said Sailor's company paid her back with 12 percent interest. She said she didn't know the property likely wasn't worth what she had loaned.

She said a mortgage broker she trusted arranged the transaction and she expected him to do due diligence such as checking the appraisal. She said she stopped lending after losing money on an unrelated deal.

Sailor later took out more loans on the Ernest duplexes. When he defaulted on a $75,000 mortgage, the lender foreclosed.

Bottoming out

The cracks in Sailor's finances were widening as he began his last term in office.

He fell behind in his state income taxes. He lost four properties in the metro area and one in Macon after facing foreclosure.

He had joined the swanky, private 191 Club on Peachtree Street in 2004, but within two years, the club sued him for non-payment. The final bill: $1,153.

He borrowed $80,000 from payday lending lobbyist Willie A. Green, a retired Denver Broncos football player, with a promise to pay him back $120,000 in five days, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported. That loan, along with Obie Bacon's, remains unpaid.

In April 2007, a towing service took possession of his black 1998 BMW after it was abandoned, records show. Georgia Auto Pawn held a lien on it. Four months later, police arrested Sailor for bouncing a $1,100 check for utilities. A felony fraud charge was dropped after he paid up.

By January 2008, an undertone of frustration seeped into Sailor's court filings. Asked where he worked, Sailor wrote that he was "serving as STAFF MINISTER" at his father's church in Dacula and "as a duly elected STATE REPRESENTATIVE."

He didn't mention the Atlanta church, Greater New Light Missionary Baptist Church, where he also preached. Its leaders have accused him of secretly obtaining a mortgage on their property, too.

In the January court filings, Sailor said he did not own his car or home. He wrote that his Norcross townhouse — furnished by his wife — and 2007 Corvette were leased.

The townhouse was outside his legislative district, which state law required him to live in. But Sailor had bigger concerns.

The previous month, FBI agents had arrested him after he agreed to launder $375,000 for an undercover officer posing as a drug dealer. Sailor told the agent he'd laundered money before. He promised to cooperate in a public corruption investigation in exchange for a more lenient sentence.

The Macon duplexes involved in the Lee Anderson sales have new owners. Despite repeated vandalism, they are trying to fix the duplexes up and rent them.

Elsewhere in Macon, buildings involved in Sailor's deals are not faring so well. Seven remain condemned.

The Ernest Street duplexes, which also have new owners, are missing windows and doors. Trash is piled in the yards between them.

They have some visitors.

"Homeless people stay in them," said Silvia Benitez, who lives across the street. "Police come and take them out."

Computer-assisted reporting specialist Megan Clarke contributed to this report.