MARION—The woman who was forced into battle with Marion bigwigs has lost her bid in court to keep her property and have it restored in her name.
Ann Colburn, who owned a mobile home park in town that was in a new TIF District designed by Doug Bradley of Marion Heights LLC (and other variations on the name so as to muddy the TIF waters as to where the tax money was going), lost the significant court battle on the afternoon of April 28 when Judge Carolyn Smoot ruled against her, despite having evidence in hand that showed that Bradley had somehow convinced a branch manager at Regions Bank in Indianapolis that he was legally able to buy Colborn’s mortgage on the property—on which she’d renegotiated repayment terms after falling behind following significant damage to the mobile homes and property upon the May 2009 derecho storm that ravaged the area—when in fact Bradley could not legally do so: he wasn’t the noteholder, and he wasn’t a certified and registered debt collector in the state of Illinois.
Colborn ran into trouble last Fall after a successful summary judgment motion was granted to her over Bradley’s presentation of an ‘allonge’ note, which he claimed was a suitable substitution for an Original Bank Note, something he was lacking that would have showed he had the right to the property…or that he had standing at all to pay off the loan and pay the note off in the first place.
Smoot in October ruled that the summary judgment be awarded in Colborn’s favor. However, the trouble had already started by that time: Colborn lost her attorney prior to the summary judgment, and has been unable to find one since that time who is willing to take on the Marion machine, which includes the greedy Bradley, the complicit mayor Bob Butler (who is still refusing to turn over FOIA’d material pertinent to corruption possibly taking place in the TIF Districts), and others in the area, including state-level politicians.
Colborn, who endured two death threats during the course of the case in 2013, has been looking for an attorney since last Fall. Word coming out of the courthouse last November was that Smoot also received a death threat in connection with the case, but Colborn would not comment on whether or not she was made aware of this threat.
It’s unclear what the threat issued to Smoot contained, nor whether it was a factor in the April 28 closure of the case in favor of Bradley.
Colborn has not indicated whether she will pursue the decision to a higher court.