By winning the bidding, Tiede won the right to own the house--if no one else pays off the outstanding balance in the meantime.
But the maneuvering by investors hoping to cash in on Ross's misfortune wasn't over yet. In early April, a one-year-old company called 99 Corp., owned by Boulderite Hans Fedge, contacted Dubas and Sandstrom at the trustee's office to complain about Castleberry's tactics.
"They told us that the way Castleberry had obtained this deed on Ross's house was invalid because Hortense Ross was mentally incompetent," Dubas recalls. Although her office had received the initial foreclosure notice, this was the trustee's first clue that something might be amiss at Hortense Ross's place. Sandstrom quickly called the city attorney's office, which instructed the Denver Department of Social Services to check it out.
Meanwhile, despite 99 Corp.'s earlier claims that Ross was incompetent, Fedge began visiting her himself at the nursing home. According to trustee records dated April 17, he finally persuaded Ross to sign over yet another quitclaim deed. This time she received $1,000 for transferring her house to 99 Corp.
"I'm not sure how they got that deed," Assistant City Attorney Patrick Wheeler said in court this week. "If she was incompetent for [Castleberry's] Vision Investment, she was incompetent for 99 Corp. as well."
Hans Fedge refers calls to his attorney, Jeffrey Parsley, who declines detailed comment on the transaction.
The assorted contracts signed by Ross have left two parties claiming ownership to the house. So last month, Fedge and 99 Corp. sued Vision, Castleberry and Ross, claiming that 99 Corp. was the rightful owner of Ross's old house.
Although the two parties hoped the lawsuit would settle the question of who owned the house, it also set off alarms at social services and in Judge Coughlin's chambers.
At a court hearing on the case held May 4, Coughlin questioned whether Ross was mentally competent enough to have given her house to anyone. Two weeks later, on May 18, he ordered the public administrator, Robert Steenrod, to assess Ross's lucidity; he also halted any further action on the foreclosure.
If, at the next hearing, scheduled for May 29, the judge finds that Hortense Ross was unaware of what was happening to her when she signed the deeds, then Steenrod's office will begin representing Ross, and the process will start all over again. Part of Steenrod's job will be to make sure that Ross receives a fair value for her old home.
The recent court action has left Meeks livid: Hortense, he says, is owed nothing. "If you don't have the money to redeem, you got nothing to sell," he argues.
Since he acquired the Poplar Street property from Castleberry, Meeks adds, he has already spent $20,000 fixing it up to prepare for resale. He figures the house could go for as much as $70,000.
"Foreclosure," he says, "is quite a game."
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