Pittsburgh   Vision Property Management, headquartered in South Carolina, seemed like a bad penny that kept turning up in every neighborhood we door knocked in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The ACORN teams spent a lot of time before and after these visits trying to understand as clearly as possible the business model for the company. It was hard to ever figure out how they lost money on any of these almost universally rundown and dilapidated properties, but their model wasn’t so much rip-and-run, as it was lie-steal-and-scam.

We were mystified how this predatory outfit could get away with this plain and simple fraud and grand larceny? One of our team found a video from Green Bay, Wisconsin of all places done by Channel 5 television and its reporter, Nate Stewart. The piece had the vibe of an ISIS hostage video with the speakers disguised so that Vision would not recognize them. Perhaps they were concerned that now that they were confessing their shameful acts, that Vision might do the unspeakable to them? Since Vision does virtually all of its dirty work via the internet and telephone with virtually no on-the-ground staff, they were probably right to realize that the company could follow the dots back to them.

We had heard plenty horror stories from victims, and reading the Green Bay report, these were confessions right from the horse’s mouths! Read, listen, and weep:

· “We knew we were putting people into situations that they couldn’t handle.”
· “My big problem with the culture there was that we knowingly manipulated people’s bad situations for our own gain.”

Ok, you may not have been with us on the doors, but if there was any doubt about their corrupt business model, here’s what another Vision worker has to say:

“When the customer ended up signing the contract and there were liens or the pipes were missing, we could say ‘well we had a recorded phone call with you, I instructed you to go find that out.’ But by nature, we weren’t dealing with the most sophisticated real-estate consumer. So I can say ‘go to the clerk of court, go look up public records’ all day long, but if you don’t know how to do that or if you don’t even know what I’m talking about and you just want to get off the phone with me so you can get into this house, just say yeah all day long.”

“If they’re already in a financial situation that puts them in a position to be working with a company like this, they probably can’t afford to throw down several hundred dollars to have an inspector come in and look at all this stuff. Often times when they do, the inspectors are appalled like, ‘no, no don’t buy this!'”

We met a number of people who were on SSI or Veterans payments, where Vision was taking between one-third and one-half of the wannabe buyer’s check for their scheme, and according to their workers in Green Bay, this was no coincidence, but their deliberate strategy. Here’s what one said to Channel 5:

“We sold a considerable amount of houses to people who were making a $721 month social security check – and with $228 monthly payments, they had no business living in the house. They obviously didn’t have the means to repair it themselves or pay somebody to repair it.”

The Vision crowd, according to its employees, were equal opportunity thieves. Their business model was exploiting lower income families desperate for housing, but they didn’t mind stiffing local governments and anyone else they owed a buck. Here’s what one woman told Channel 5:

“I would sometimes record two or three deeds at a time for one actual sale or one actual purchase, and no tax would be paid because Michigan, Pennsylvania and Maryland have higher taxes. They yelled at me and told me they refused to pay that tax and I would need to find a loophole. There were some that were legit, but the majority of them we just didn’t send them in. We were told that ‘we’ll just pay it if we get caught, but if we don’t, we’re not paying the government a dime,’ and so that’s what I did.” She added that many times she was told to get the deeds to the county overnight so Vision could get it processed in the tenants name before they found out – even if the house had many repairs needed or was up for demolition.

These are just stone cold crooks. You’re wondering why the FBI isn’t investigating for wire fraud, well so am I. You’re wondering why the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau isn’t all over these bad boys, well so am I.

In November, Channel 5 touted the fact that Vision’s operation in Green Bay was being investigated by the Attorney General in Wisconsin. Writing this, I found another Channel 5 piece in mid-February but there’s still no sign almost six months later that the AG in Wisconsin has done much to stop Vision. In fact the February piece was mainly about the fact that reporters from the New York Times, the City of Green Bay, and Channel 5 were all being stonewalled by Vision. No mention of any activity by the Wisconsin AG or any progress there.

Stealing from poor and working families isn’t big news, it’s just standard operating procedure for Vision and a pile of other operations. It seems pretty clear that Vision will operate with impunity until we organize enough of the victims to stop them.