Money gone, home buyers try to pick up the pieces
Jack Snyder | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted August 6, 2006
orlandosentinel.com
Fifteen months ago, Jason and Heather Wells signed over their life savings to have a dream home built in a brand-new Apopka subdivision.
"We were so excited," Jason Wells recalled. "We picked out colors. We were visiting the property every week, visualizing how it would look."
The only problem: "Nothing was happening."
The Orlando builder who had taken their $75,000 down payment -- and had no black marks with city officials or the local Better Business Bureau -- also withdrew about $100,000 from the couple's construction loan with a local bank. Still, nothing.
"It was one disappointment after another," Jason Wells said. "They kept saying they would start next week."
A hundred or more other would-be homeowners are in the same jam. They each paid thousands of dollars -- in at least one case, nearly a half-million dollars -- in down payments and loan installments for homes that were never built, in subdivisions that in some cases were never constructed.
The suspect: Barrington Homes Inc., a 4-year-old company whose two principals, John and Deanna Barrington, have been arrested on federal conspiracy and fraud charges. The company's employees have been fired. Its headquarters in south Orlando has been foreclosed on and sold.
Customers briefed by federal investigators say an estimated $5 million to $10 million is missing. And the company has virtually no assets to seize.
"We've just been devastated by this," said Jason Wells, who like some Barrington victims is trying to salvage what he can of his family's investment.
Wells, one the few Barrington victims willing to talk about his plight, said he and his wife thought they had done everything they could to protect themselves.
Wells had researched John Barrington and his company on the Internet and with the Better Business Bureau. He had talked to the city of Apopka about the builder's local reputation, since he was working on three subdivisions there -- Paradiso Park, where the Wellses had bought land; Meadow Woods Estates; and Promise Place Estates.
He had visited the company's headquarters, where he saw a bustling enterprise with about 30 employees. An established financial institution in Casselberry, R-G Crown Bank, was lending substantial amounts of money for Barrington projects, he said.
What the Wellses -- and the bank -- didn't know was that John Barrington was a convicted felon known as John Jakows, who had changed his last name in state court to hide his criminal past.
"How can a felon be allowed to change his name?" Wells asked. "That's so frustrating. No wonder we couldn't find anything out."
John and Melissa McConnell of west Orange County paid Barrington $200,000 cash and watched as nearly $250,000 of a $715,000 construction loan was disbursed to the builder. Yet no work was done on the home they were planning in Lake Cawood Estates near Windermere. John McConnell said he and his wife bought the lot from John and Deanna Barrington. Lake Cawood Estates is not a Barrington Homes development and is not under investigation.
"There's not even a rusty nail on the lot," John McConnell said. "This has been a nightmare for us."
The couple, meanwhile, have continued paying R-G Crown Bank about $1,700 a month interest on the loan for their nonexistent house.
"I researched John Barrington and the company and found nothing," Melissa Radley-McConnell said.
"Stress is so hard on the body," she added. "John and I are determined not to let this affect our health."
Even some real-estate professionals were stung by the Barringtons.
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