Olympic gold medalist Cindy Brown has been legally evicted from her home in Villa Park, California. Brown is the victim of a long battle with an identity fraud case that most recently resulted in the 56-year-old being removed from her home by Orange County sheriffs.
The athlete took home the Olympic gold medal as part of the USA Basketball team in 1988 in Seoul, Korea. Before that, she was an All-American athlete at Long Beach State and a gold medalist in the 1987 Pan-Am games.
According to KTLA, an unknown person used Brown’s signature to commit fraud, falsify documents which resulted in the woman’s legal eviction. She is now living in her car outside her former home.
Brown purchased the Orange County residence in 1991 and had been living there for nearly thirty years. The retired basketball player has been dealing with the identity theft case for over a decade.
According to the LA Sentinel, Brown met a woman named Kela Holmes in 2004 who claimed to be a business manager. The two became a couple,, and Brown moved Holmes into her home. At the time, the former Olympic athlete was worth about $2.5 million. Brown told the publication that Holmes, acting as her manager, made over $260,000 in stock funds then disappeared by 2005.
Another attorney said a man acquired a fake loan document on Brown’s home for $380K back in 2005.
He then went to a bank with a lost loan affidavit that included Brown’s signature falsely claiming he had lost the loan. The bank then sold the fake loan to The Bank of New York Mellon, who claim they purchased the loan fairly and have no involvement with the fraud.
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Brown went to court over the matter but lost because her attorney abandoned the case and failed to provide the fraudulent documents. The attorney was eventually suspended by the California State bar over the matter.
In January 2005, Brown filed a complaint with the Orange County Sheriff against Holmes, but nothing came of it. She claimed she lost $1 million in the scam and also filed identity theft charges against Holmes, but at that point, her former manager already had her signature, so it was too late.
“They took my money and skimmed the equity and took off,” Brown told The OCR back in 2009. “I’ve lost everything I worked so hard for.
The Department of Business Oversight of California acknowledged that the loans were fake, but that did not help resolve Brown’s issue. The bank’s attorneys moved the case from local to federal court and ultimately forced the eviction.
To make matters worse, Brown also says she is a victim of targeting and profiling by her neighbors and police. She says they displayed racist behavior towards her and called her slurs related to her sexuality and her race.
Brown has a court date at the end of the month that could resolve the case and allow her to get her home back.
