A Cobb County woman was arrested Tuesday morning for stealing million-dollar homes in three metro counties and renting them.
A DeKalb County grand jury indicted Susan Loraine Weidman on racketeering charges, claiming she and two other men set up an elaborate scheme to seize vacant, foreclosed homes and keep the banks that owned the homes at bay.
Weidman used the courts to claim squatters’ rights, then put fraudulent tenants in homes in well-to-do Cumming, Sandy Springs and Decatur neighborhoods using phony leases while warding off attempts to bounce them with letters threatening litigation, prosecutors alleged.
“Everything was fake,” DeKalb County District Attorney Robert James said. “The lease is bogus. The property management company is bogus. They had a bogus law firm calling to threaten legal action if they foreclosed. No one could accidentally do this.”
Included with Weidman on the indictment were accomplices Ian Justain Greye, a tenant at the Decatur home, and Mathew Daniel Lowery, who supposedly was renting the Forsyth County home. It’s unclear who rented or occupied the Sandy Springs house.
The indictment and Weidman's arrest were spurred by an extensive investigation initially begun by Channel 2 Action News.
Much of the plot was run from an Atlanta post-office box, and in some cases, actually used the local legal system, as alleged in the indictment.
“There was a criminal scheme going on right under our noses," James said. "Right in the shadow of the courthouse.”
Over the the past year, Weidman filed court documents claiming possession of the homes by adverse possession.
An affidavit claiming “apparent abandonment” of the 130 Champlain St. home in Decatur was filed in February, stating that Weidman had discovered the home empty in December, moved in two months later and made “improvements,” like hanging curtains, repairing locks and windows and cutting the grass.
“The property, in my opinion, was in legal limbo,” she told Channel 2 in an interview last month, referring to the Cumming home at 6645 Shade Tree Way. “I’ve asked [property owner Chase Bank] repeatedly to show that they have clear title of the property, and they never have.”
She suggested that the homes were under foreclosure because the previous owners had succumbed to predatory lending practices.
“I have identified a couple of houses that had legal issues,” Weidman said in the September interview. “I said, ‘Gee, the bank is getting these houses for free.
“What right does [a] bank have to be collecting on houses where the mortgage was predatorily loaned to begin with?”
She claimed the law was on her side.
“The reason why the bank in that [Cumming home] case is not willing to press charges is because they know the loan is predatory, and they can be counter-sued for a lot,” Weidman said.
And when tenants were in place, she flexed some phony legal muscle.
Letters from the fictitious law firm Gates, Levin & Hoffman were sent at different times to Coldwell Banker, owners of the Decatur home, and to Prudential Real Estate, the owner of the home in Sandy Springs.
“You are advised to remove this property from the [Multiple Listing Service] and CEASE AND DESIST the harassment of the tenant, lest your firm be named as co-defendant in a harassment/wrongful foreclosure lawsuit,” the letters, dated in February and September, read.
James said his office used the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to win an indictment across county lines.
"RICO allows us to cross jurisdictional lines and essentially wrap things up criminal enterprise," he said.
Tuesday morning, as DeKalb County DA’s investigators searched the Decatur home, Weidman sat in handcuffs on the porch, where neighbors said Greye frightened and unnerved them.
“What was the fear? That there were meth labs or child porn or who knows what going on there,” said neighbor Kay Penter, who told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she knew the former owners. “If they’re not renting through the legal, legitimate channels, then something had to be going on.”
Another neighbor, Pat Hollman, said Greye would leer at passers-by from the front porch and that parade of different visitors would come to the house in the middle of the night.
“My main concern was him standing on the front porch with a jug of wine, screaming at no one in particular,” said Hollman. “I stopped letting my 7-year-old play in the front yard.”
Greye, 31, was arrested in August by Forsyth County Sheriff’s deputies on methamphetamine possession, fleeing police and reckless driving charges.
Penter said she was grateful to see the year-long occupation of the house come to an end, and was frustrated that the mother and daughter who once lived in the home had to move while squatters like Greye had seemingly free rein of the home for so long.
“It’s a total relief,” she said. “The people that originally owned it and built it with their blood, sweat and tears would’ve loved to have stayed here.”
Hollman, too, was glad so see an end to the disturbances for which she said Greye and Weidman were the cause.
In her interview with Channel 2, Weidman said she had no intention of grabbing very many foreclosures.
“I’m not trying to take a lot of houses,” she said. “I’m just trying to make a point. Adverse possession is legal and there are properties out there with very predatory loans.”
But Hollman argued that Weidman was in the wrong.
“Just because people are going through hard times right now doesn’t give anybody the right to take advantage,” Hollman said.
Weidman was taken into Decatur police custody for questioning, and will then be held at the DeKalb County Jail while awaiting a bond decision.
Police are looking for Lowery, 27.
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