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CHICAGO- After five years of fighting FHA fraud on the west side of Chicago, the South Austin Coalition Community Council (SACCC) has won a settlement against Easy Life Realty, the realty company that used FHA programs to rip off families in the 1990s.

Easy Life, run by Luis Prus, profited from selling overpriced poorly rehabbed houses to unsuspecting families. More than 100 of these families have already lost these homes to foreclosure due to the double burden of paying off an inflated mortgage and making costly repairs to keep the house up to code.

An additional 100 additional families that bought houses from Easy Life are currently in default and at risk to lose their homes.

In addition to SACCC's settlement against Prus, six of Easy Life's agents were indicted on charges of targeting unsuspecting buyers with fraudulent real estate deals, including falsified paperwork to lenders and misleading homebuyers.

SACCC has been able to make their fight with Easy Life a national issue by working with NPA. Traveling to DC to confront HUD directly about the fraud that has devastated their neighborhood and featuring the Easy Life scam at NPA's national conference forced HUD to acknowledge their responsibility for this scam and to also make a settlement themselves.