Trying to Hold Onto Home

Jackson, whose business has since closed, did not respond to requests for comment. Efforts to locate her have been unsuccessful.

Jacqueline Prunty said her intuition should have told her something wasn't right when she saw the flashy cars outside the company's office. The couple met with Jackson, whom they described as a smooth fast-talker.

A month behind on their $1,100 mortgage payment, they were told to skip the next couple to get into a credit repair program. "That was their catch, telling us, 'We have this covered,' " George recalled.

The Pruntys said they took Metropolitan's advice and stopped paying the mortgage. Within a couple of months, a letter arrived in the mail from their lender that said the house was in foreclosure.

"We weren't even in a foreclosure when we went" to Metropolitan, George said. "We were coming in for a refinance."

Metropolitan then told the Pruntys that they could get into a program that would help them keep their home and add at least 100 points to their credit scores, which were in the low 600s -- low enough to make it difficult to obtain loans at good interest rates or rent an apartment.

While they were in the credit-repair program, Metropolitan said it would work on the foreclosure by getting someone to invest in their property, George recalled.

He said he felt like he didn't have anywhere else to turn, so he agreed to Metropolitan's proposal. When it came to signing the deal, Jacqueline said there were so many papers on the table she didn't know what she was signing.

The couple said they didn't realize that they were signing over the deed of their home to the investor. Nor did they know they were signing away more than $100,000 in equity.

The straw buyer hasn't made any mortgage payments on the Pruntys' house, they said. And now, said the Pruntys' attorney, Phillip Robinson, the house has been foreclosed on and was recently sold to a bank at auction.

"They could be kicked out any day," Robinson said. "We've asked the judge to hold off until this other case [the class-action suit] is handled."

Robinson said he has been working on a case-by-case basis to keep his clients from being evicted. He has asked Maryland's attorney general to order that no one involved in the lawsuit be evicted while the case is pending.

Meanwhile, the Pruntys are setting aside money and looking for places to store furniture and belongings. George Prunty said he sometimes peers out his window and finds cars driving slowly by his house. Some take pictures.

"We're in a holding pattern," he said. "We were told to start saving money because we don't know what tomorrow is going to bring."

They've also been told, he said, that someone should always be at the house; otherwise it could be seen as "voluntary abandonment."

"We used to go out to my son's baseball and football games. Now one of us is always here," he said. "It used to be a family thing."

"You can't get mad," Jacqueline said. "It's a lot of people going through it. If we were the only ones, then we would be mad."

But anger is a waste of her energy, she said. And at this point, she doesn't even have the energy to take the birthday tablecloth off her table. She said she'll get to it.

Right now, she's more worried about coming home and finding a "pink slip" on her front door.