Dave Collins reports in the Day about Andrew Lockwood, candidate for a seat on the New London City Council. Lockwood, who “earned” a law degree from the Massachusetts School of Law, an unaccredited (by the ABA) law school in Andover, MA. Since then he’s apparently flunked the bar on a number of occasions, which in my humble opinion requires a great deal of effort.
But it’s Lockwood’s various scrapes with the law that drew Collins attention, including a number of arrests, lawsuits, etc.
Among them, Collins singles one out for special attention:
The most worrisome allegations that I turned up against Lockwood, in a routine search, were contained in a story The Day published about 10 years ago.
It reported on a lawsuit in which three separate plaintiffs claimed Lockwood was part of a “racketeering” scam that duped them into buying overpriced properties and securing mortgages for them with phony appraisals and credit applications. The suit also named two lawyers, a mortgage broker and an appraiser.
One of the plaintiffs, who the lawsuit said could neither read nor write and functioned at a “noticeably low intelligence level,” was enticed into buying a house for $63,500 that Lockwood had paid only $20,225 for the year before, according to the litigation.
Lockwood helped him fill out a credit application that erroneously reported that the plaintiff was a general manager of the car dealership Lockwood owned at the time and made $60,000 a year, the lawsuit said. The two other plaintiffs in the lawsuit had similar stories.
Lockwood told me that he never helped make out the application, that the plaintiff was simply a tenant whom he referred to a real estate agent to buy the house. He said he made substantial improvements to the house, contrary to the claim in the lawsuit, and that it was worth what it sold for.
The lawyer who brought the lawsuit said Thursday that the plaintiffs received a settlement in the case, although he could not recall how much or whether Lockwood had to pay anything.
Lockwood told me he did not pay anything to resolve the suit and that he believes the mortgage company involved was found to be at fault.
That was one of my favorite cases, but it’s true, my memory of the settlement terms is hazy.
I actually sued Lockwood twice, but in the second case I got out due to differences with my client. He eventually got a judgment against Lockwood, but I doubt that he ever collected. Lockwood is probably right that he didn’t pay anything to settle that case in 1999. When you do this work long enough you have a sixth sense about identifying the defendants that are effectively “judgment proof”. Some folks are always in the money, but never seem to have visible assets. I went after the lawyers, where the money is.
Anyway, that case, it turns out, was an early warning sign, a portrait in miniature of the practices that nearly destroyed the economy. These were subprime loans of the lowest order.
My clients had no business buying houses. The “general manager” of the car dealership, (as well as his wife) was on SSI due to the fact that he was mentally retarded. He certainly didn’t knowingly lie about his source of income. He could barely read. I had two other clients in the same case, each of which had similar stories, though they weren’t retarded. The common thread was poverty and Lockwood. (I don’t believe for a minute that he put substantial amounts of money into those houses before he flipped them; I certainly saw no sign of any improvements.)
The interesting thing, unsurprising in retrospect, was the fact that the bank involved (Ameriquest) was totally uninterested about the scam when I called them about it. I realize now that they couldn’t have cared less. They had sold the paper and made their money, and didn’t give a rat’s ass about repayment. Silly me. Back then I believed that mortgage lenders were interested in repayment. I probably should have sued them too, thinking about it now.
So this case had all the elements. Inflated home prices. Corrupt brokers. Crooked appraisers. Deceptive loans (all of the loans had balloon payment requirements the clients could never have made) and creditors who passed the risk to deluded investors. Lockwood was a minor but essential figure in this particular scam.
When Collins called me the first thing I asked when he told me Lockwood was running for office was whether he was running as a Republican. It was with much relief that I got an answer in the affirmative.
Republicans don’t do well in New London, and the odds against Lockwood are high. It’s a sign of how truly desperate they are that in the face of all of this evidence the town committee chairman is standing by his candidate.
By the way, Lockwood’s comment to Collin’s article (scroll down at the linked article) is well worth a read. Is he truly that illiterate, or does he think anything goes if you’re writing on the internets?
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