Debt-collecting machine | The Washington Post

Debt-collecting machine | The Washington Post

The firm that threatened to foreclose on hundreds of struggling D.C. homeowners is a mystery: It lists no owners, no local office, no Web site.
Aeon Financial is incorporated in Delaware, operates from mail-drop boxes in Chicago and is represented by a law firm with an address at a 7,200-square-foot estate on a mountainside near Vail, Colo.
Yet no other tax lien purchaser in the District has been more aggressive in recent years, buying the liens placed on properties when owners fell behind on their taxes, then charging families thousands in fees to save their homes from foreclosure.
In 2008, Cuyahoga County was reeling from a sinking economy and plummeting housing prices. In two years, Aeon spent more than $25 million buying thousands of liens in the county’s largest city, Cleveland, as well as several nearby cities.
But unlike the District’s homeowners, who largely paid the fees to avoid foreclosure, hundreds in Ohio didn’t do so. Aeon went on to foreclose on more than 400 properties, from Cleveland’s historic Slavic Village to the badly blighted east side.
Aeon tried to sell the properties, but buyers were scarce. In neighborhoods across Cleveland, Aeon houses are rotting, prompting inspectors in the past two years to condemn 41 properties and file more than 100 code violations.