Sopranos Season 4, Episode 7 - Posted by JD

Posted by DaveD (WI) on November 19, 2003 at 16:14:21:

Hi Brent,

What’s ironic is we probably haven’t heard the rest of the story yet…

I can envision the scrappers coming down with a respiratory illness. They will blame it on the escaping freon from when they cut the pipes. They will hire a lawyer to sue the heirs of the estate along with Blockbuster of course. Not hard to figure using the same logic as shaking down paint companies for lead in paint made 50 years before the paint company was even in business. Obviously it will happen after the statute of limitations runs out on their vandalism crime.

I can’t wait for legal reform.

Sopranos Season 4, Episode 7 - Posted by JD

Posted by JD on November 19, 2003 at 24:28:39:

I am sure others have seen this already, but I just rented the tape. Good profile of HUD flipping scam. Shill buys 4 dumpy SFRs in a Newark War Zone for $125,000 each (looked like the shill overpaid to me). Shill contracts to sell properties to a non profit corporation for $325,000 each. The non profit hires an appraiser ‘that is willing to play ball’. The non profit gets loan approval directly from HUD prior to going to a Bank(I don’t know if this was done for dramatic effect, or if this is common in multiproperty situations). Loans fund (presumably 203Ks, they still allow them for qualified non profits, I don’t know if they are 85% or 100% LTV). Rehabs go over budget because of ‘unforseen construction delays and vandalism’. There was a side issue regarding stripping the properties of Copper pipe that made no sense, lol. One of the writers deceided to have Tony strip the properties of $7,000 in copper piping (yea right).

Re: Sopranos Season 4, Episode 7 - Posted by Brent_IL

Posted by Brent_IL on November 19, 2003 at 14:10:19:

About fifteen years ago, there was a restaurant in Chicago that had been doing over two million dollars a month before the owner died. The place was scheduled to be closed for almost six months during probate and then reopen under new management. In the interim, over an estimated period of two weeks, thieves broke into the building, but ignored hundreds of thousands of dollars of portable restaurant equipment. They trashed $150,000 of built-in coolers and freezers in order to cut out the copper refrigeration pipes. The restaurant never reopened and is now a huge BLOCKBUSTER® video store.

I guess copper is easy to sell.