Bank Forecloses On Durham's Geist Mansion

The IBJ's Greg Andrews reports on a foreclosure action brought against alleged Ponzi scheme operator Tim Durham on his palatial Geist estate.

JPMorgan Chase has slapped embattled financier Tim Durham with a mortgage-foreclosure suit, and is asking a court to order his Geist mansion sold through a sheriff’s sale.


The New York-based banking company said Durham stopped making payments this spring on a $3.5 million mortgage he took out in 2007. Because the mortgage runs 30 years, Durham had barely made a dent in the principal, despite required monthly payments of $18,329.

The suit, filed in Hamilton County last month, represents another setback for the Ohio bankruptcy trustee trying to scrape together assets for investors in Akron-based Fair Finance Co., the Durham-owned company that collapsed last year, in large part because of massive loans to Durham and other insiders.

Andrews reports Shelby County Bank also had a $1.9 million lien on the property as collateral for a line of credit it extended to Durham. Essentially, Durham has no equity in the home because the outstanding mortgages total as much as the listing price for the home, $5.5 million. According to bankruptcy trustee for Fair Finance Company, the Ohio company Durham plundered, investors only hope for recovery comes from a collection of expensive cars and artwork owned by Durham that have been turned over to the bankruptcy trustee for auction. Ohio investors lost about $200 million in the now-bankrupt company that loaned out most of the money they invested with the company to Durham and companies he controlled. Although federal investigators accused Durham late last year of operating a Ponzi scheme, there have been no criminal charges brought against him to date as the one-year anniversary of the FBI raid on his offices nears.