LAKELAND, Fla. — Many Florida homeowners are bombarded with ads, phone calls, and mail from wholesale real estate investors offering to buy their homes quickly for cash.
I-Team investigator Adam Walser is hearing from a 91-year-old Lakeland woman who signed a contract to sell her home which she says she did not understand and is now being sued.
She may have to move out of her home next month if she loses in court.
“I have a check. Some people send me their check,” said Fidela Rodriguez, who turned 91 on September 11th.
She pointed to her kitchen table, which is covered with marketing materials that look like handwritten checks from wholesale real estate investors.
Some of the amounts written on the solicitations are more than $200,000.
“I don’t believe it,” Rodriguez said.
Fidela already has a contract to sell her home, which she signed two years ago, but she’s trying to get out of it.
Recently, she removed pictures from her walls in case she is forced to move out quickly.
“She doesn’t have anybody. Nobody to talk to. No neighbors. Nobody,” said Poly Agbara, Rodriguez’s pharmacist.
“They came to her house... just sign here”
Agbara contacted the I-Team after Fidela showed up at his pharmacy in tears, worried she would lose her home over the contract she signed without consulting anyone in September 2022.
“They came to her house... just sign here, sign here, sign here. So she didn’t know what she was getting into. She didn’t know she’s signing away her property,” he said.
Rodriguez met us at the pharmacy so Agbara and his assistant could help translate.
She is a native of Puerto Rico and says she still struggles with reading and understanding English.
“I hear on the radio in my car those people, they buying house. Yeah. And they help the person who sells the house to move any place they want to go and take all their stuff,” Rodriguez said, describing how she learned about the company.
Fidela wanted to move back to Buffalo, NY, where she lived 18 years ago before her husband died.
She says she still has a few remaining elderly friends there who could help care for her.
“I don't have nobody here to help me,” Rodriguez said.
She called the number from the ad and reached Problem Property Pals, called “PPP” in court documents.
A salesman showed up and she signed a contract to sell her property for $100,000, with a closing two months later.
“They made me sign some paper and I say, those papers that I signed, what do they say? I don't … can’t read it in English, “ Rodriguez said. “They don't give me nothing in Spanish. Only in English.”
One-way plane ticket to Buffalo
Court documents show PPP arranged for movers to come to the house on October 28.
Rodriguez says she was told she needed to be out of the house that day.
“And I say, no, that's not the agreement. You told me that you were going to take me to Buffalo. One thing before that... You don't pay me for the house,” she said.
Court records show Joseph Peck, PPP’s registered agent, bought Fidela a one-way plane ticket to Buffalo for October 31, two days before the closing.
“He didn't tell me nothing about flying,” Rodriguez said.
She said nobody offered to take her to Tampa International Airport for the flight, about an hour’s drive from Rodriquez’s Lakeland home.
Court records show PPP paid a company a $2,200 deposit to move all the belongings from her three-bedroom home to Buffalo in a Chevy Traverse.
The contract stated that she would be responsible for reimbursing the company for the plane ticket, moving costs, and other expenses.
Rodriguez says she didn’t even have a bank account in New York state to receive money from the sale and had not arranged for a place to live.
Instead of flying to Buffalo, Rodriguez landed in the emergency room at Lakeland Regional Hospital the week of the closing with chest pain and high blood pressure.
The following month, she was sued for breach of contract, seeking to force her to sell her home for $100,000.
That’s $17,000 less than Polk County records show she paid for the home in 2006.
PPP’s registered agent says he's no longer with the company
We went to the addresses listed for Problem Property Pals on state business records, hoping to talk to Joseph Peck.
At shared workspaces in Channelside and Ybor City, employees told us the company had moved out.
We went to another address in downtown Tampa that PPP listed with the Better Business Bureau, where we found a locked door with no sign.
We reached Peck on his cell phone, and he stated he was no longer with the company, even though his name still appears on state business records, and he submitted a sworn statement in connection with the lawsuit against Rodriguez.
“Hustling: from Heroin to Houses”
Peck directed us to his partner, George Beatty, whose picture we saw on Fidela’s documents.
Beatty, who lives in Philadelphia, has videos posted on YouTube advertising PPP and touting his sales skills.
Some of the videos go back seven years.
“As soon as I’m out of this house, it’s just gone. It's just on to the next one,” Beatty said in an interview posted last year.
Beatty even wrote a book called “Hustling: from Heroin to Houses” describing his journey from being a drug addict to a wholesale real estate mogul by the time he turned 30.
He claimed in an interview it was an Amazon bestseller, but in mid-September 2024 it was ranked #2,898,163.
We emailed and called Beatty multiple times, but he did not respond.
Trial is scheduled for October 17
Fidela hired an attorney, who filed a countersuit alleging Rodriguez was exploited because she “does not understand or read English very well” and “lacks the capacity to understand the transaction nature.”
In response, PPP’s attorney said that Fidela was fluent in English and there was no reason to believe she could not understand the contract.
Another lawyer filed a complaint on her behalf with the Florida Attorney General’s Office saying a realtor determined her home was valued at $220,000 when she signed the contract.
That complaint has not been resolved.
A trial is set for October 17.
Rodriguez worries she could end up on the street.
“That’s what the lawyer told me. If you go to court, probably you lose the house,” she said.
Her friends at the pharmacy say they will stand behind her.
“If she loses the house by any chance, she’s not going to end up on the street. I'm going to be with her. She can stay at my house until we find a place for her,” said pharmacy technician Waleska George.
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