The Observer doesn't get it, any more than the NYT - that people can check this stuff out now, and broadcast their findings on the web. The state of NJ apparently doesn't get it either, though it may be getting a clue:
NJ Star Ledger
2/22/04
New Jersey wants him. Creditors want him. The people he sold ramshackle houses want him. For Barry C. Fauntleroy, the man in a huge housing scam, his Caribbean hideout is ...
A prison of my own making
BY TED SHERMAN
RODNEY BAY, St. Lucia -- More than 2,000 miles from Bongi Robinson's broken-down house in East Orange, N.J., is the guy who sold it to her.
Far from February's cold, in a remote Caribbean bay filled with expensive yachts, the man at the center of a major New Jersey housing scam can be found aboard a sleek, dark blue, 54-foot sailboat known as the Romany Life.
....The state's civil trial is set to begin in June, but Fauntleroy has yet to answer the complaint because New Jersey says it does not know where he is.
"We have been unable to locate him," said Genene Morris, a spokeswoman for the attorney general's Division of Consumer Affairs.
ON THE WEB
As it turns out, a quick Google search on the Internet brings up a picture of "Cap'n Barry" aboard the Romany Life. Romany is a synonym for gypsy.
The Web page promotes tropical charter sailing vacations, showing the well-equipped boat in the Grenadines, an unspoiled part of the Caribbean's Windward Islands not yet overrun by tourists and cruise ships.
New Jersey Citizen Action, a consumer advocacy group working with banks to restructure the loans of those who purchased houses through Fauntleroy's companies, discovered the Web site a few weeks ago.
Heh. |
