Prince George's Fairy Tale Unravels For Woman at Center of Fraud Probe

Last summer, Joy Jenise Jackson and Kurt Fordham hosted 360 guests at their $800,000 wedding. Jackson faces allegations of defrauding homeowners. (Courtesy Of Chris Duncan)

It was a partly cloudy summer day when Jackson, Fordham and their guests took over the Mayflower Hotel. Booking a wedding at the downtown hotel, especially in June, is never an inexpensive venture. The couple reserved a majority of the Mayflower's halls and banquet centers for their wedding ceremony and reception and 56 rooms for the night of the wedding.

Aside from LaBelle -- who gave a seven-song concert with "Lady Marmalade" as her finale -- gospel harpist Jeff Majors and R&B crooner Raheem DeVaughn performed, as did a Howard University choir.

At one point during the reception, shown on the video, Jackson stood in the middle of the dance floor as the master of ceremonies encouraged guests to bring their "dollars, fives, tens, twenties, fifties and hundreds. It's the Money Store, baby."

One man showered Jackson with dozens of bills as she stood under the cascading dollars. Meanwhile, Fordham appears in the video sitting behind her at a table counting and straightening the bills brought to him in a sack. The nuptials were later featured in a wedding advertisement in The Washington Post Magazine.

The good fortune wouldn't last.

Already, the real estate market had turned sour, making the foreclosure recovery business difficult, even when the process was working properly.

Investigators are looking into whether Jackson's company actually used the equity it drew out of homes to make the promised mortgage payments. Some of that money was shared with Fordham's investment company, Fordham & Fordham, according to investigators. State law prohibits foreclosure consultants from investing in firms that are owned by family members.

"I would say Joy Jackson got into a position where she was not able to keep her promises," Duncan, the former employee, said. "Her intent was good, but the sky started falling."

By the end of summer 2006, Metropolitan had begun to lay off employees. It stopped airing ads. Duncan said he realized something was wrong when he returned to his office one October afternoon and found employees having a "shredding party." All the documents on his desk, he said, were missing.

The company shut down in December.

In May, Jackson and Fordham put their house on Glasgow Court, with its designer carpet and marble floors, on the market.

In early June, an "estate sale" sign went up: Beds, expensive lamps, jewelry, designer clothes, even a rack of fur coats were for sale, neighbors said.

Last month, the house went into foreclosure.

Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.