Home Safe Financial Assistance, Incorporated is formed in Missouri. The filing lists Elijah Norton as an incorporator and as the company's registered agent.
Missouri Sec. of State, articles of incorporation, 2/2010 →The story
Home Safe Financial Assistance charged homeowners facing foreclosure about $3,000 to modify their mortgages. Elijah Norton incorporated it in Missouri in February 2010, served as its registered agent, and formed a Kansas company of the same name that June.
By September the company had collapsed. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that of its 300 to 400 paying clients, at least 200 had paid for work it never performed. The paper called Norton the company's former chief executive and quoted him defending it. He had resigned as registered agent 17 days before the story ran.
In 2013 the owner, Derek Doherty, pleaded guilty to mail fraud and was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison. Norton was not charged.
The receipt →What the record shows
In timeline order.
2010
April to August 2010: the period the federal court later identified as when the company's owner took advance fees for loan audits that were never performed.
U.S. DOJ, EDMO (2013) →Norton incorporates a Kansas company of the same name, Home Safe Financial Assistance, as its sole incorporator.
The owner later tells the Post-Dispatch that in July he laid off the mortgage-modification staff and closed the office, which had moved to Kansas weeks earlier.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9/18/2010 →Norton files his resignation as the company's Missouri registered agent.
Missouri Sec. of State filing →The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the company had 300 to 400 paying clients and that at least 200 paid for work it never performed. It identifies Norton as the company's former chief executive. He and the owner say they modified 50 to 70 mortgages.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9/18/2010 →2013
The owner, Derek Doherty, is sentenced in federal court to 15 months in prison and ordered to pay $98,835 in restitution after pleading guilty to mail fraud for taking advance fees for loan audits he never performed. Norton was not charged.
U.S. DOJ, EDMO (2013) →Every date above comes from a court record, a state filing, a Justice Department release, or the St. Louis Post-Dispatch story of September 18, 2010. This page states what those records say and does not assert what Norton knew.
The receipt → Back to the case →