Founders of Home-Buying Club Face Charges of Theft

Flowers Home Club of Inglewood promised cut-rate homes to working-class investors, but authorities said this week that the husband and wife who ran the club used it instead to defraud 25 families out of $42,000.

Seroy and Jacqueline Flowers were arraigned Monday in Inglewood Municipal Court on 30 counts each of grand theft, money laundering and violations of the state Corporations Code. The founders of Flowers Home Club pleaded not guilty and are being held in lieu of $25,000 bail pending a preliminary hearing May 16.

Too Good to Be True

This week’s charges culminated an investigation that began last October, when several investors complained that the club was not living up to its promises. Although some club members charged that they had paid membership dues of up to $4,000, Flowers Home Club had not purchased any land or built a single home.

Investors, most of whom were renters who lived in Inglewood and neighboring cities, said they should have known the pitch was too good to be true.

Seroy Flowers, 30, and Jacqueline Flowers, 25, offered to build three- and four-bedroom homes--with no down payments, interest rates of 3% and monthly mortgages as low as $633, club members and police said.

Black working-class investors said the pitch was particularly potent coming from club President Seroy Flowers, who is also black. Flowers promised to break down barriers of racial prejudice allegedly erected by white loan officers and real estate agents.

But Flowers had no capital or resources to fulfill his promises, Inglewood police Detective Paul Harvey said.

“He’s just a cold-blooded thief,” Harvey said.

Flowers never built a single home, police said. And when the investigation heated up last fall, police said, he closed the Flowers Home Club office on Inglewood Avenue and claimed that investors’ money had been stolen by burglars.

Elation Tempered

Seroy and Jacqueline Flowers were arrested Sunday afternoon in Ontario, where they were living in a rented home.

Former members of the now-defunct club said they are happy to learn of the arrests, but their elation is tempered because police have told them that there is little hope that they will get their money back.

The average $1,700 loss was substantial for most of the families.

“The reality of owning a home here in California is that you have to come up with a big down payment,” said Kenneth Lewis, a Hawthorne airline mechanic who lost $3,000. “I could have used that money to put a down payment on a mobile home. I had to stop dead in my tracks on that. So I’ve tried to build my savings back up again from zero.”

Legal secretary Shelia Hill lost $756. “It’s not a lot to some people,” she said, “but I’m a single parent and I didn’t have the money to lose.”

When complaints began last year, Harvey sent out questionnaires to the club’s members, interviewing each to see how much money they had invested, he said.

An exhaustive search of the Flowerses’ bank records followed. Harvey said the records show that the couple paid office expenses, advertising bills and personal expenses but spent none of the funds to buy land or build homes.

Inglewood police said they were able to warn off as many as 50 others who planned to invest in the home club.