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Verne Hutchinson...Real Estate Career Ends!

Couple linked to real estate scam caught
By SANDRA TAN
News Staff Reporter
5/14/2005

The law finally caught up with Venere Hutchinson, with the help of some astute police officers in Tennessee and a 3-year-old copy of The Buffalo News.

Hutchinson and his then-girlfriend, Dana Upcher, were cited as among Buffalo's most negligent property owners in a 2001 Buffalo News investigation. The couple fled the state shortly before the state Attorney General's Office obtained indictments against them on multiple grand larceny and fraud charges in April 2002.

For years, no one could find the two fugitives. Some speculated that they had fled to the Virgin Islands. The true story is far more interesting.

Hutchinson and Upcher were linked to a $2 million real estate scam that defrauded at least five major lending institutions, according to the Attorney General's Office.

The couple - now Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson - were suspected of buying properties from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for a few thousand dollars each, then working with others to secure second mortgages for as much as $100,000 above each property's assessed value.

Most of these East Side and Lower West Side "investment" properties sat empty and unsecured, contributing to neighborhood blight and attracting drug abusers and illegal dumpers. Housing code violations piled up against the owners in City Court.

But the couple stayed off the radar until last week.

Cleveland, Tenn., Police Officer Andy Ratcliff was doing routine traffic monitoring on Interstate 75 on a Wednesday afternoon when he pulled over a GMC Yukon with improper tags.

The driver identified himself as Michael David Smith and presented Ratcliff with a valid Georgia driver's license. His passenger identified herself as Dequlan M. Jones. She gave the officer an obviously fake ID, Ratcliff said.

Both passengers appeared nervous but agreed to let Ratcliff search the car. Among the many items he found were: $14,000 in cash tucked away in a small tissue box, digital scales with marijuana residue, a laptop and disk apparently used for producing counterfeit money orders, some new electronics, and a copy of The Buffalo News from 2002.

"At this point, we had no idea who we were dealing with," Ratcliff said.

Officers took the couple into custody on minor drug charges. They ran their fingerprints but turned up nothing.

One officer, though, zeroed in on the male suspect and instantly knew Michael Smith wasn't the man's real name.

It turns out the officer used to sit next to the suspect in high school English class. He couldn't quite come up with the name, but he knew the Smith alias didn't fit the arrogant classmate he remembered.

By this time, it was well past midnight. Ratcliff sorted through some of the stacks of paper he'd pulled from the suspects' car. That's when he caught another glimpse of the copy of The News.

"I'm sitting here with my feet propped up with all this crap surrounding my desk when I saw this article in the paper that said something about "scam', " he recalled.

He knew the couple had kept this old newspaper for a reason. He flipped to the front of the city section.

There was the headline: "Couple sought in $2 million real estate scam." And beneath it was a photo of Venere Hutchinson.

Bingo.

"He had to keep a trophy," Ratcliff said of the paper. "That was really stupid of him."

Ratcliff walked over to Venere Hutchinson's holding cell and held up the warrants he'd pulled up from New York State.

"I hope you like Buffalo," Ratcliff told him, "because you're going back."

Hutchinson later told Cleveland police that he'd been involved in major automobile and real estate scams in Atlanta, working with other shady operators to obtain loans and mortgages that far exceeded the value of the initial property.

The New York State Attorney General's Office has accused him of doing virtually the same thing in Buffalo.

Local investigators had spent a year building a legal case showing that Hutchinson, Upcher and partner Rahmel Wattley bought 40 depressed Buffalo properties for a total cost of $119,000, then fraudulently obtained bank mortgages on them totaling more than $1.9 million.

"We were both surprised and delighted that after three years we were finally able to arraign them," said Assistant Attorney General James Morrissey.

Since Hutchinson and Upcher disappeared in 2002, most of their properties here have fallen into foreclosure. But according to city records, the couple still owns five properties on Normal, Mohr, High, Holland and Sumner streets.

Several of the couple's local associates accepted plea deals in 2002 for their roles in the scam. Their convictions ranged from falsifying business records to fraud and grand larceny.

The Hutchinsons were arraigned before State Supreme Court Justice Mario J. Rossetti on Friday morning. He denied bail after Morrissey told him about the couple's flight and capture.

The Hutchinsons are headed for City Housing Court on Monday and will appear before Judge Henry J. Nowak to answer 164 housing code violations and seven health code violations on 24 of their former properties.

e-mail: stan@buffnews.com