1. BY MARK PUENTE AND DARLA CAMERON
Times Staff Writers
Real estate investors have discovered a for-
mula that transforms Tampa Bay’s housing
crash into quick and easy profits.
How quick?
In Hillsborough County last year, 242 homes
were bought and then resold within just one
day. Another 113 sold the same way in Pinellas.
To be clear, that’s not a seller finding a buyer in
one day and entering into a contract that closes
weeks later. It is a property bought and sold in
one day, start to finish.
How easy?
The price markup on one-day flips averaged
$9,728 in Hillsborough; $7,545 in Pinellas.
Darren Wilson got a hard lesson in this fren-
zied business in October when he offered
$18,000 cash for a foreclosed house in Tam-
pa’s Seminole Heights neighborhood. Wilson
says he refused the real estate agent’s request
to also represent both him and the seller, so she
wouldn’t have to split the commission.
The home later sold for $16,900. The same
agent Wilson turned down wound up represent-
ing the seller and the buyer, West Florida Whole-
sale properties. West Florida sold the home
again for $26,000, a 53 percent markup.
Wilson lost the deal despite making the higher
bid, and the bank lost $1,100.
Said Wilson: “There is something strange
going on here.”
• • •
Flipping isn’t new. It was common during the
real estate boom that peaked in 2006. People
profited by buying and reselling homes in a rap-
idly appreciating market.
Today, in a depressed market, astonishing
speed stands out.
In calendar year 2011, 587 homes sold twice in
Hillsborough County. The median time between
Quick
flips
profit
a fewFour firms account for more
than 30 percent of property
flips that take a week or less.
. See FLIPS, 15A
A Tampa Bay Times
investigation
After gathering in Grant Park, protesters marched through the streets of Chicago last weekend, trying to get as close as they could to
McCormick Place, where the NATO summit was held. Chicago police officers on foot, bicycle, horseback and Segway lined the streets.
A COMING CLASH
Tampa police Assistant Chief John Bennett
stopped to watch it all from the dappled shade of
a young elm tree.
In August, Tampa will host the Republican
National Convention, and many of the same pro-
testers will converge on its streets. Bennett and
other local public safety officers had come to get a
peek at what to expect when 10,000 protesters mass
in Tampa’s smaller, and much hotter, downtown.
“This looks like the aftermath of Gasparilla
right now,” Bennett said, as a caped man wearing
a rubber boot as a hat circled four people carrying
cardboard cornstalks.
Bennett predicted that Tampa, with its experi-
ence handling the Super Bowl and the Gasparilla
parade’s drunken crowd of 500,000, could deal
with this.
As he spoke, the sun disappeared and the
wind picked up. Thunder cracked. Less than 100
feet away, Chicago police officers in pale blue hel-
mets and protesters in black bandannas began
jostling. Bottles and sticks flew. A man scaled a
skinny leafless tree and shook it violently.
Bennett craned his neck. “They rushed the
police,” he said.
He climbed a barricade and turned on his video
camera, zooming in on the fracas. It was hard
to tell what was going on, but the swinging billy
clubs didn’t look like Gasparilla.
Tampa preps for protests at the Republican National Convention
by studying a dress rehearsal of sorts: the NATO summit in Chicago.
STORY BY LEONORA LAPETER ANTON | PHOTOS BY MELISSA LYTTLE | Times Staff
CHICAGO
T
he socialists shouted and the Hare Krishnas hummed. Half a dozen men held up a Palestinian flag the size of
a swimming pool. Middle-class moms in pink wielded cardboard guns, part of the antiwar crowd.
On the first day of the NATO summit last weekend, an estimated 3,000 protesters with every message imag-
inable swarmed south on Michigan Avenue. They were flanked on either side by compact lines of Chicago
police officers.
A scrum of young people dressed in black and wearing masks snaked through the crowd carrying a red and black
anarchy flag.
“What do we want?” they roared. “Dead cops! When do we want it? Now.”
. See PROTEST, 8A
“It’s got to be safe for everyone.
It can’t be survival of the fittest,”
Tampa police Assistant Chief John
Bennett said, referring to expected
protests during the RNC in Tampa.
DANIEL WALLACE | Times
Hillsborough County’s chief
medical examiner, Vernard
Adams, 59, plans to take a
college position after 21 years
and thousands of autopsies.
Endformedicalexaminer
No, Hillsborough County’s chief pathologist isn’t dying. He’s retiring.
BY PATTY RYAN
Times Staff Writer
TAMPA — Vernard Adams
has the physique of a man who
walks 3 miles a day, lifts weights
and regularly dances the tango.
He lunches on nutrient-rich sar-
dines and broccoli. He’s 59 and
healthy, with a father who is 90.
But he does autopsies for a liv-
ing, and so, yes, he has consid-
ered how he might prefer to go.
“A cardiac arrhythmia,” he
said. “It’s instant death. The
heart stops. Ten seconds later,
you’re unconscious.” He pauses.
Wry smile. “But on a water haz-
ard at the golf course.”
He doesn’t golf. He just likes
the idea of leaving a challenge for
fellow forensic pathologists.
Hillsborough County’s chief
medical examiner will retire
from his post next month, after
21 years of solving the district’s
puzzles. He has accepted a uni-
versity position out of state.
His 3,922 autopsy reports, the
bulk of a career total near 5,500,
will linger in color-coded files:
red for homicide, yellow for sui-
cide and black for traffic crashes.
The plain manila ones, deaths
from natural diseases, interested
him the most, though television
cameras came for the others.
His first autopsy was a lung
cancer patient at Tufts Univer-
sity School of Medicine. His most
recent: a possible drug overdose.
Over the years, as he watched,
death changed its robes.
Drug abusers started arriving
obese, with bad backs and oxy-
codone habits, eclipsing gaunt
. See ADAMS, 12A
USF softball
team heads to
College World
Series. Sports, 1C
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A DAY FOR THE RACESSports, 1C
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IN PERSPECTIVE
Bureaucratic praise
Give it up for the boring bureaucrat who
may have saved your life. 1P
IN LATITUDES
Are we there yet?
School’s out! Time to take off. But before you
do, read our vacation ideas and a survival
guide for summer’s family road trip. 1L
INDEX
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Syria blamed
as attacks kill
32 children
U.N. and U.S. officials condemn
the violence, which raises new
questions about a peace plan.
Associated Press
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Gruesome video Satur-
day showed rows of dead Syrian children lying
in a mosque in bloody shorts and T-shirts with
gaping head wounds, haunting images of what
activists called one of the deadliest regime
attacks yet in Syria’s 14-month-old uprising.
Syrian tanks and artillery pounded the village
of Houla, near the restive city of Homs, during
the day, opposition groups said, then soldiers
andpro-governmentfightersstormedthevillage
and killed families in their homes late at night.
The attacks Friday killed more than 90 people,
including at least 32 children under the age of 10,
the head of the U.N. observer team in Syria said.
The attacks sparked outrage from U.S. and
other international leaders, and large protests in
the suburbs of Syria’s capital of Damascus and
its largest city. The attacks also renewed fears of
the relevance of a month-old international peace
plan that has not stopped almost daily violence.
The United Nations denounced the attacks in
. See SYRIA, 6A

2. * * * * Tampa Bay Times | Sunday, May 27, 2012 | 15A
the first sale and the close of the
second: three days.Pinellas expe-
rienced a similar pattern.
A Tampa Bay Times investi-
gation of property deals in Hills-
borough and Pinellas counties
found that four firms account for
more than 30 percent of the flips
that take a week or less.
One of them is West Florida
Wholesale Properties, the firm
that bought the house Wilson
wanted. In 2011, West Florida
bought and then resold 139 prop-
erties within just 60 days.
Most of West Florida’s flips
took place in much less time.
The average was nine days; the
median 5.5 days. On average, the
final selling price was 33 percent
higher than what West Florida
originally paid.
Take as an example West Flori-
da’s flip of a three-bedroom, two-
bath 1,864-square-foot house at
3909 Deleuil Ave. in Tampa.
Fannie Mae, the government
sponsored mortgage holder,
had foreclosed on the home
in November 2010 and subse-
quently sold it two months later
to California-based USA Rental
Fund LLC for $19,000.
On March 14, West Florida
bought the house for $39,500.
That same day, West Florida
resold the house for $69,000.
• • •
The Times asked how West
Florida Wholesale Properties can
flip so many homes so quickly.
Lee Kearney, a real estate
agent and husband of company
managing member Megan Zelin-
skas, said West Florida finds
potential buyers while still nego-
tiating with the bank to buy the
property.
Kearney said many West Flor-
ida customers are investors from
France, Spain and England. He
said the firm promises to fix up
the homes after the sale, so the
investors can then rent them out.
West Florida profits on the quick
flip by convincingbuyers thatthe
home has future earning poten-
tial, Kearney said
He said the investors make
more in rental profits than they
could make in the stock market.
“We send before and after pic-
tures” to the investors, he said.
“It’s a complete package.”
Kearney has a connection to
one of the other firms that dom-
inate the bay area’s quick flip
market. Bay Area Trust, formed
in 2008 by Gregory Vander Wel,
received $478,400 more than it
paid by flipping 59 houses in a
week or less last year, according
to public records. That’s an aver-
age increase of more than 24 per-
cent.
Kearney holds only a sales
associate license. In 2011, he han-
dled a few transactions under
Vander Wel’s broker’s license,
a common practice within the
industry.
Vander Wel, through a spokes-
person, declined to talk to the
Times.
• • •
Christopher Smith of Bay to
Gulf Holdings laughed when
asked about West Florida Whole-
sale Properties’ practice of mak-
ing improvements after selling
homes.
That is not how Smith’s com-
pany does business.
“You buy and fix, then sell,” he
said.
Smith’s Tampa firm received
$301,000 more than it origi-
nally paid by flipping 31 homes
in a week or less in 2011, accord-
ing to public records. Smith said
the firm buys most of its proper-
ties from courthouse auctions in
Hillsborough County.
One of his firm’s flips was the
1,088-square-foot house at 1910
E Flora St. in Tampa.
On March 18, Bay to Gulf
bought the home from Fannie
Mae for $25,000.
That same day, Bay to Gulf
flipped the home to FPNS Invest-
ments LLC for $30,000. A tidy
increase, to be sure, but noth-
ing compared to what FPNS got
the next month when it sold the
same house to Yves Sellier for
$70,000.
Smith emphasized that he
findsbuyerswhilethepaperwork
for his bank deal is being final-
ized. Although the prices appear
low on many deals, he said lend-
ers prefer cash buyers instead of
deals contingent upon apprais-
als, financing and repairs.
“Which offer would you take
if you were the bank?” Smith
asked. “There is no secret to this.”
Mark Helmling of St. Peters-
burg-based CentralFlorida Hold-
ings Group, said lenders are try-
ing to get houses off their books.
3909 Deleuil Ave., Tampa
Yearbuilt:1958 Sq.ft.:1,864 Beds/baths:3/2
Originallistprice:
$39,900
Sale activity
Nov.11,2010:Citi-
Mortgagetransfers
toFannieMae
Jan.27,2011:Fan-
nieMaesellsto
California-based
USARentalFund
LLCfor$19,000
March14:USA
RentalFundsellstoWestFloridaWholesalePropertiesfor$39,500
March14:WestFloridaWholesalePropertiessellsto3909Deleuil
AvenueLLCfor$69,000
West Florida
Wholesale
Properties
Flipsinaweekorless:60
Totalpriceincrease:$529,200
Avg.increase:$8,820
Flipsin60daysorless:139
Totalpriceincrease:$1,773,600
Avg.increase:$12,760
Bay Area Trust
Flipsinaweekorless:59
Totalpriceincrease:$478,400
Avg.increase:$8,108
Flipsin60daysorless:76
Totalpriceincrease:$662,200
Avg.increase:$8,713
Bay to Gulf
Holdings
Flipsinaweekorless:31
Totalpriceincrease:$301,000
Avg.increase:$9,710
Flipsin60daysorless:58
Totalpriceincrease:$904,000
Avg.increase:$15,586
Central Florida
Holdings Group
Flipsinaweekorless:43
Totalpriceincrease:$234,000
Avg.increase:$5,442
Flipsin60daysorless:73
Totalpriceincrease:$473,700
Avg.increase:$6,489
He, like Smith, said his firm
makes renovations before resell-
ing homes to investors.
His company received
$234,000 more than what it paid
by flipping 43 homes in a week or
less, according to public records.
“We are aboveboard,” Helm-
ling said. “The banks are the ones
creating their own problems” by
not seeking higher prices.
Last year his firm flipped a
1,235-square-foot house at 7307
50th Ave. N, in St. Petersburg.
It purchased the home from
the U.S. Department of Hous-
ing and Urban Development on
Oct. 6 for $20,000 and sold it for
$25,000 the next day to Hector
Patino and Denise Baker-Winter.
One day later, they sold the same
house to Thomas and Janeadaire
Durban for $35,000.
• • •
Making improvements after
selling homes isn’t the only dif-
ference that sets West Florida
apart from its rivals.
More than 85 percent of West
Florida’s quick flips included a
single real estate agent repre-
senting both the bank and West
Florida. Fifty-two of 60 to be pre-
cise. At the other three firms, the
same agent represented both
buyer and seller on less than 35
percent of the quick flips.
Darren Wilson says it cost him
a deal. He’s the part-time inves-
tor who offered to buy the home
on N Cherokee Avenue in Tampa
for $18,000 that West Florida
secured for $16,900 and then
quickly resold for $26,000.
Christina Griffin, a Realtor
with Coldwell Banker in Tampa,
represented Bank of America in
the sale. According to Wilson,
she demanded that she also rep-
resent him on the sale, a request
he refused.
She wound up representing
the bank and West Florida on the
deal, which allowed her to avoid
splitting the commission with
another agent, according to My
Florida Regional Multiple List-
ing Service data.
Bank of America spokes-
woman Jumana Bauwens said
the bank rejected Wilson’s bid
because a required form was
missing. Wilson insists he signed
the form.
Griffin and Coldwell Banker
did not respond to multiple
requests for comment.
“This is wrong,” Wilson said.
“Nobody is looking at this.”
• • •
Should someone in author-
ity be concerned about the new
quick flip phenomenon?
It may be nothing more than
people trying to make a buck,
just as they did with earlier, more
are absorbing the losses.”
Should real estate firms and
Realtors transform this hypo-
thetical scenariointoactual prac-
tice, it might run afoul of the law,
according to former prosecutors.
“Brokers and real estate agents
acting on behalf of a seller of real
property have a duty to present
all offers to purchase, whether
high or low, to their seller,’’ said
Brian Albritton, former U.S attor-
ney for the Middle District of
Florida and currently a partner
at Phelps Dunbar in Tampa.
Todd Foster,
a former su-
pervisory assis-
tant U.S. attor-
ney and man-
aging attorney
at Todd Foster
Law Group in
Tampa, said ac-
tivity in which
an agent fun-
neled homes to
onebuyercould
be considered a
‘‘scheme to de-
fraud’’ under federal law.
In this context, Foster said:
‘‘This may include a buyer, seller,
appraiser, Realtor or mortgage
broker — the statute is broad
enough to reach anyone who
defrauds another. However,
before being held criminally
responsible, an individual must
be shown to have specifically
intended to defraud another.
Merely being involved in a trans-
action where there has been a
loss, regardless of the amount of
the loss, does not mean there has
been a crime committed.”
Foster pointed specifically to
the bank fraud and mail fraud
sections of the U.S. Code. The
former “proscribes the use of a
scheme or artifice ... to defraud
a Federally chartered or insured
financial institution.’’
The latter basically makes it
a crime to use the U.S. mails to
accomplish the same thing.
Ann Fulmer, a former Georgia
prosecutor who co-founded the
Georgia Real Estate Fraud Pre-
vention and Awareness Coali-
tion, said a crime could be diffi-
cult to prove even if taxpayers
are absorbing losses.
“Theshortertimebetweensales,
the more likely it is shenanigans,”
she said. “But it can be difficult to
tell. You don’t know what the (real
estateagent)toldthebank.”
Mark Puente can be reached at
mpuente@tampabay.com or
(727) 893-8459. Follow his Twitter
feed at twitter.com/markpuente.
From the front page>
tampabay.com for the latest news
. FLIPS continued from 1A
Quick flips bring in big bucks for a few
1910 E Flora St., Tampa
Yearbuilt:1953 Sq.ft.:1,088 Beds/baths:3/1
Originallistprice:
$49,900
Sale activity
March18,2011:
FannieMaesells
toBaytoGulf
HoldingsLLCfor
$25,000
March18:Bayto
GulfsellstoFPNS
InvestmentsLLC
for$30,000
April29:FPNSinvestmentssellstoYvesSellierfor$70,000
3260 Laurel Dale Drive, Tampa
Yearbuilt:1984 Sq.ft.:1,338 Beds/baths:2/2
Originallistprice:
$75,000
Sale activity
July2,2010:Wells
Fargodeedsto
U.S.Departmentof
HousingandUrban
Development
June22,2011:
HUDsellstoBay
AreaTrustLLCfor
$35,000
June24:BayAreaTrustsellstoSalmaPropertiesLLCfor$55,000
7307 50th Ave. N, St. Petersburg
Yearbuilt:1957 Sq.ft.:1,235 Beds/baths:4/2
Originallistprice:
$44,000
Sale activity
Oct.6,2011:HUD
sellstoCentral
FloridaHoldings
GroupInc.for
$20,000
Oct.7:Central
FloridaHoldings
Groupsellsto
HectorPatinoand
DeniseBaker-Winterfor$25,000
Oct.7:PatinoandBaker-WinterselltoThomasandJaneadaireDurban
for$35,000
Sources:FloridaDepartmentofState,DepartmentofCorporations;HillsboroughandPinellascountyrecords;MyFloridaRegionalMLSdata
Four companiesstandout
Here are government-owned homes flipped by each of the companies
A look at deals in Hillsborough and Pinellas finds these four making more than 30 percent of flips that take a week or less.
5 miles
301
41
60
75
4
75
275
275
Tampa
New
Tampa
Plant City
Sun City
Brandon
Tampa Bay
DARLA CAMERON | Times
HILLSBOROUGH
Source: Hillsborough County Property Appraiser
39 properties bought and sold twice in the same day
West Florida Wholesale Properties bought and then resold 111 Hillsborough
County homes in 60 days or less last year. The company flipped many of
them in a week or less.
21 properties bought and sold twice in one week or less
51 properties bought and sold two to four times in two months
Fast sales, for a profit
DANIEL WALLACE | Times DANIEL WALLACE | Times
DANIEL WALLACE | Times SCOTT KEELER | Times
conventional forms of flipping.
Further, state records contain
no complaints against West Flor-
ida, Bay to Gulf, Bay Area Trust
or Central Florida Holdings. And
the Times could find no exam-
ples of federal authorities prose-
cuting anyone for similar quick
flips.
That’s not to say that regula-
tors aren’t curious about this
new world of flipping.
The Times sent a sample sale
from each of the four firms that
do many of the quick flips in
Hillsborough and Pinellas to the
U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development.
In response, HUD spokes-
man Lemar Wooley said the Fed-
eral Housing Administration
“has received information about
instances of investors who have
‘flipped’ FHA (foreclosed homes)
acquisitions for a quick profit
and is in the process of conduct-
ing an internal review of these
instances. As such, HUD has no
comment on the specific cases
cited in Florida at this time.’’
The combination of rapid-fire
flips and a single agent repre-
senting both the buyer and seller
on the original sale raises con-
cerns that banks and the federal
government and ultimately tax-
payers are losing money on the
sale of foreclosed homes.
JoniHerndon,vicechairwoman
of the Florida Real EstateApprais-
al Board, and other real estate
observers are concerned about a
potentially worrisome symbiotic
relationship among a few inves-
tors and real estate agents.
“There’s too much monkey
business going on,” said Hern-
don, a 27-year industry veteran
who testifies in court on real
estate fraud.“It’s the little cliques
that work all these deals.”
The scenario she and others
fear begins with a real estate firm
trying to assure a steady supply
of houses to flip in a highly com-
petitive market for foreclosed
properties. The firm joins with a
Realtor who represents a bank or
other lender needing to dispose
of large numbers of foreclosed
properties.
The deal:
The Realtor representing the
bank funnels homes to the real
estate firm, assuring a steady
supply. In return, the Realtor also
gets to represent the real estate
firm in the sales, avoiding having
to split the commission.
In that arrangement, the Real-
tor has no incentive to present
the bank with other potentially
higher offers from parties the
Realtor does not represent.
Torealestateexperts, therapid
Joni Herndon
fears there’s
“monkey
business”
going on.
resale suggests that the original
seller did not get the best price
for the property. And, since fed-
eral agencies owned some of the
homes or insured the mortgages
on them, rapid flips could mean
that taxpayers may be short-
changed in the process.
“How the heck does a home’s
value go up by (thousands of dol-
lars) in eight hours?” Herndon
said. “Somebody dropped the ball
at the bank. They’re not doing
their due diligence. The taxpayers