Jury finds man guilty in Gary housing scam

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Randall Causey. | Provided Photo~Sun-Times Media ptmet

Updated: March 1, 2012 9:48AM

A federal jury found on Friday a Gary man guilty of taking part in a mortgage fraud scheme that took in almost $650,000.

Randall B. Causey was found guilty on all seven counts of conspiracy of wire fraud and wire fraud. The jury announced its verdict after about an hour of deliberating, Mary Hatton, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Hammond, said. The trial lasted five days.

Causey was charged with seven other defendants of taking part in a scheme to buy homes in Gary and Merrillville for tens of thousands of dollars more than they were actually worth. Prosecutors said that Causey would go online to find people outside of Northwest Indiana to buy these homes, convincing them that his company, Netlink Construction, would fix the homes up and then act as property managers to rent the homes. The buyers, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jill Koster said, were sold a dream of making money as landlords that Netlink never followed through with, often making little attempts to find renters for the properties.

Other defendants in the case who have already pleaded guilty testified that they and Causey would make money by filing fake construction liens against the house for work that was usually never done, which were then paid off by money from the mortgages the buyers took out. They also lied about the financial status of the buyers so the banks would approve the mortgages when they normally wouldn’t have, Koster argued.

The indictment listed 25 homes on which the defendants made money.

The buyers, who were almost all women and had no knowledge about buying real estate, usually had good credit but no where near enough income to support buying these homes, Koster said. Many of the homes have since landed in foreclosure, and many of the buyers in debt because they couldn’t afford the loans.

Causey’s attorney, R. Brian Woodward, argued that two other defendants, Sheila Chandler and Gordon Rainey, were the criminals in this case and that his client was simply being paid a finder’s fee for getting them buyers.