San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
‘There’s nothing there’
‘Queen of Mobile Homes’ accused of Ponzi scheme
Chimene Van Gundy refers to herself as the “Queen of Mobile Homes” and “the Mobile Home Millionaire.”
The monikers reflect the business she says she’s built buying manufactured homes on the cheap, fixing them up and then flipping them for a tidy profit.
The New Braunfels businesswoman boasts that mobile home investing secured her a place in one marketing group’s “two comma club” for those who have earned more than $10,000,000.
Some who have invested with Van Gundy expecting heady returns, however, have a far different take on the entrepreneur. They say she’s reneged on principal and interest payments on the loans they made to her. And they allege she’s orchestrated a Ponzi scheme that has collectively cost them and others at least a few million dollars.
Their complaints were enough to get Van Gundy dethroned.
A Comal County judge recently appointed a receiver to take control of one of Van Gundy’s firms — Outstanding Real Estate Solutions Inc., or ORES — and her personal assets and financial records. Part of the receiver’s job will be to locate assets and preserve what’s left for creditors.
There may be little to recover.
“Everything we’ve seen indicates ORES has no assets,” attorney Clayton Matheson, who represents some investors, said in arguing for a receiver during a court hearing. “The only property ORES is affiliated with is (her) homestead, which Ms. Van Gundy tried to sell … without telling us.
“So, at the end of the day, there’s nothing there,” he said.
The situation had gotten so dire that Van Gundy, 45, allegedly told one Georgia couple she’d pay them back by selling her eggs to a fertility clinic.
It’s quite the downfall for
Van Gundy, who also pitches herself as a “real estate mogul,” “business coach,” “professional speaker” and “philanthropist.” A savvy self-promoter, she has appeared on various podcasts, YouTube programs and magazine covers. She also co-authored a book sharing her ragsto-riches story — and telling readers about the wealth waiting to be made in mobile home investing.
Compounding Van Gundy’s troubles, she’s struggling with health problems after a fall in December. Her doctor advised she not testify at a court hearing in mid-April because she has to keep her stress level down.
Compelling her to take the witness stand, her lawyer Michael Morris said, “would be tantamount to her being forced to having an epileptic seizure.”
Van Gundy — who gets around with a walker — never entered the courtroom, remaining in an adjoining conference room over the course of the two-day hearing.
On Wednesday, eight days after the receiver’s appointment, Van Gundy personally filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation. She listed assets of less than $50,000 and debts ranging from $100,000 to $500,000.
Difficult upbringing
By her own account, Van Gundy overcame a difficult upbringing to make her way into the mobile home investing arena.
Born in 1976, she said she was raised in Des Moines, Iowa, the fifth of seven kids.
“My family (was) pretty poor,” she said on the program “God Made Millionaire TV,” streamed last year on YouTube. “I also was raised in a church cult. That later led to me being thrust into the foster care system, where I was then trafficked, sex trafficked. Once I turned 17, I was emancipated and went on with my life.”
Van Gundy wed at 17 and had her first child a year later in 1995. The marriage lasted four years, a period in which her and her husband filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, court records show.
She later remarried. As Chimene Marsh, she earned a degree in criminal justice in 2007 from the University of Texas at San Antonio and had three more children.
She went on to work “multiple jobs in the corporate world” and as the “lead paralegal for several different law firms,” according to a profile in the 2021 winter edition of P.O.W.E.R. Magazine. It chronicles successful women.
Her second marriage ended in a “painful divorce” after 14 years, she said. She eventually married her current husband, Chad Hess. The couple have one child together. It’s not clear when she began using the surname Van Gundy.
She was “making a lot of money” when she was laid off around 2015, she said on the podcast “Think Realty” three years ago. She was 36 when she got the pink slip.
“After that happened, (I) made a decision that I would never work for someone else again,” she said on “God Made Millionaire TV.”
On the advice of a friend, she read “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” the bestselling but oft-criticized financial advice book by Robert Kiyosaki. It advocates building
wealth through real estate investing.
“That book changed my life,” Van Gundy said. She scraped together $20,000 by selling her grandmother’s jewelry and other heirlooms and borrowing $3,000 from her husband so she could attend classes through Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad Education.”
“And that’s how I launched my business,” she said. “I was determined that I was going to change my life and my kids’ life. Nothing was going to stop me.”
Brand building
Van Gundy “noticed the need for mobile homes and afford
able housing,” according to the P.O.W.E.R. Magazine profile.
So she incorporated Outstanding Real Estate Solutions Inc. in late 2015 at a time she said she had a negative net worth of $50,000.
Within 16 months, she said, she had made $1.2 million investing in mobile homes. She didn’t give details about any of her transactions, however.
“It’s an untapped market in real estate,” Van Gundy said on “God Made Millionaire TV.” “Not a lot of people know about it. Most investors think of it as trailer trash. They don’t think of it as a legitimate way to make money.”
She added, “It’s really the last affordable housing in America.”
Van Gundy’s story contains some discrepancies. For instance, she was introduced on the podcast “Embracing Vision” in May 2020 as having bought, fixed and flipped more than
600 mobile home units and owning 30 mobile home parks. Yet in the winter 2021 edition of P.O.W.E.R. Magazine, the profile writer put the number of units bought and sold at more than 500. Either way, the numbers couldn’t be independently verified.
Van Gundy partnered with former telecommunications executive Michael Trofimoff,
60, of Dillard, Ga. He’d started out as an investor learning about mobile homes from Van Gundy.
“We had driven 36 mobile home parks together,” he said on the same “God Made Millionaire TV” program. “She taught me what to look for in the parks. She taught me about different architectural styles and what that means, different manufacturers. She had me crawling under different mobile homes looking at underbellies.”
Asked by the program host about the pair’s business partnership, Trofimoff said they were “primarily raising investor money so that we can continue to buy homes and parks, and pay our investors very well.”
Trofimoff called his venture Georgia Mobile Home Investing, or GMHI, and promised investors annual returns of 15 percent to 22 percent, depending on the size of the investment.
Some of the investors recruited by Trofimoff are among those who say they are still owed payments on their loans.
At the April 18 court hearing on the application for the appointment of a receiver, Morris — the attorney for Van Gundy and ORES — attempted to distance his clients from Trofimoff. All of the plaintiffs’ contracts were with Trofimoff, not Van Gundy or ORES, Morris said.
But the promissory notes the investors received say “GMHI is partnered with Outstanding Real Estate Solutions.” Investors were told their funds would be secured by liens on “one or more mobile home(s),” though the notes didn’t identify any by location. Both Van Gundy and Trofimoff ’s names were printed next to the signature line where either could sign.
Trofimoff didn’t respond to requests for comment.
‘A complete scam’
Gary Topper and his wife, Sherry, of Cumming, Ga., invested $20,000 for five years with ORES and GHMI in 2018. She had worked with Trofimoff for about 20 years. The following year, they invested another $20,000 on the same terms.
Trofimoff then set up a conference call with the Toppers and Van Gundy to pitch another investment opportunity.
“It was her raising money for a deal, a larger mobile home park that they were looking to acquire, and she needed the capital quickly,” said Gary Topper, 55. “It was 100 percent return on your money … in 30 days.”
So the Toppers invested $100,000 of their retirement savings.
The 30 days came and went, and they never saw the $200,000 they were promised. Around the 45th day, Van Gundy
mailed them a check but it bounced, he said. They later received another check for $200,000 that cleared.
Within two weeks, he said, Van Gundy told them that they could quickly double the $200,000. Rather than risk the entire $200,000, he said he and his wife chose to invest the $100,000 profit they made on the earlier investment. “House money,” he called it.
The Toppers haven’t gotten that money back or the interest they say they’re owed. Payments also stopped on their two earlier $20,000 investments.
ORES representatives gave a series of excuses for not paying, Gary Topper said. At first, they said ORES’ bank accounts had been frozen due to “activity in Dubai.” Later, it was problems related to the pandemic and then issues with ORES’ banks and payment processing companies.
In November, Van Gundy told them she would repay them with $250,000 she’d collect for selling her eggs to a fertility clinic, Topper said. Van Gundy and Trofimoff, however, stopped responding to their calls, emails and texts, he said.
“There’s no question it’s a complete scam,” he said. “She always presented herself as a Christian and someone of faith, trust and respect. We talked specifically about those attributes, and that’s something my wife and I take to heart. I basically just called (Van Gundy) out on that: ‘You’re a lying, manipulative crook.’ ”
Topper provided a declaration in the Comal County case — even though he’s not a plaintiff — to assist in efforts to get a receiver appointed.
Topper said he’s spoken with FBI and Securities and Exchange Commission investigators but has been instructed not to say anything about those conversations.
Hawaii investors
Investors from around the country lent money to ORES, including dozens in Hawaii.