Former governor's name linked to fraud

CARTERET, N.C., Sept. 20 (UPI) -- A former North Carolina governor was one of the buyers of property whose price was overstated in tax records, a Carteret County official said.

Former Gov. Mike Easley and his wife, Mary, got a 25 percent discount on a waterfront lot in the Cannonsgate gated community. However, the $137,000 discount was not recorded in the purchases price of $550,000 reported to the Carteret County Register of Deeds, The (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer reported.

Overstating the payment price of a property can result in distorted appraisals of other lots, the Carteret tax supervisor told the newspaper.

The transaction involving Easley, a Democrat, figures into a large mortgage fraud case in which more than 200 plaintiffs have said for months they were duped into paying artificially high prices for coastal lots. None of them are saying Eastey was knowingly involved in any fraud, but he and some other prominent politicians did purchase coastal property.

"When you have all these politically connected players and they are setting up pricing that is not reflected in the records at the courthouse, how are my clients ever going to get a fair market price?" said S. Jill Pisner, a McLean, Va., lawyer whose firm filed the first of the lawsuits.

Hers is the largest of several lawsuits that allege mortgage fraud in two coastal developments in North Carolina and one in South Carolina.