The Indiana Real Estate Commission has revoked the license of a broker who has been the focus of multiple lawsuits and a complaint filed by the state’s attorney general.
Indiana Lawyer reports the revocation of Jeremy Tucker’s license followed an administrative complaint filed in May by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, who claimed the Avon-based Tucker committed 27 counts of fraud or forgery, one count of lewd or immoral conduct for exploiting investors’ trust in him, and one count of failing to associate his real estate license with a licensed broker.
At a commission hearing on Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Chase Haller referred to Tucker’s approach to real estate as a “yearslong, multistate loan fraud and property-flipping scheme” similar to a Ponzi scheme. The hearing involved sworn testimony by several of Tucker’s victims who accused him of forging their names on purchase loans and nonpayment of borrowed funds that were intended for house flipping endeavors.
Deputy Attorney General Kelsey McKnight told the commission that total victim losses could be higher than $100 million.
“The amount of financial distress caused by [Tucker] on Hoosiers—and, very likely, out-of-state investors—in my opinion, is likely to approach levels of some of the highest-level financial crimes that we’ve heard about in our lifetimes,” McKnight said.
Neither Tucker nor his attorney, Aaron Freeman, were present at the hearing. In addition to revoking Tucker’s real estate license, the commission imposed on him a $29,000 fine—$1,000 for each of the 29 offenses in Rokita’s complaint, and the maximum penalty allowed by state law. The commission ruled that if Tucker were to reapply for a real estate license after a statutory seven-year period passed, he must pay restitution to victims who were awarded damages in a court case before regaining his license.
Tucker’s brother, Joshua Tucker of Brownsburg, is also a defendant in some of these lawsuits, and some of the witnesses at the hearing said the brothers worked together on the scams in question. The state attorney’s general office would not comment if Joshua Tucker were under investigation for a potential license revocation.
It looks and sounds like that this Tucker guy was a Real estate Investor that primarily flipped houses for himself, brother and outside investors. I hope his subcontractors doing the renovation work have been paid but I’ll bet you bottom dollar that they haven’t. That’s probably another sad tale in this evil saga. As a past and now retired 40 year Indiana Real Estate Broker I find these kind of people disgusting. As a 34 year full time appraiser too I dealt with dozens of investors and flippers in my career. Most were honorable people but a few had so many red flags that I told my lenders that I would not do any appraising for these particular loan customers going forward. I hope that restitution can be made. Since the market is still pretty decent and nowhere like 2008-2012 then maybe the investor monies in the houses to be flipped can be recovered. Usually however that is rarely the case because since Tucker’s a thief, crook and liar then there is a lot of financial loan issues and mechanics liens to sort out. I could see bankruptcies for some investors to get them out of this tangled mess. Indian needs to throw his ass in jail for several years to get some justice and make others think twice before they go down that immoral path.
Flippers should have to hold the properties for at least 5 years, in Germany it is 10 years. This would make the market more affordable for regular buyers. But greed rules, disgusting!