Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed, Ramil Robinson's story sounds like a

Cinderella tale.

A child living on the streets is adopted into a loving home.

You know, he was blessed. He was a blessed athlete.

He had a blessed family.

And achieves the pinnacle of success in college basketball, helping the

University of Michigan win its first NCAA championship.

Went to the White House, got to the cover of Sports Illustrated.

They were calling him Mr. Clutch.

When he turns pro, Robinson becomes a living cliche.

Vermeule had a spending problem from day one. He frequented strip clubs and

would spend unbelievable amounts of money.

A young kid with a lot of money.

What are you going to do? You're going to have a great time.

But this rags -to -riches -to -rags story has a twist.

Robinson doesn't buy Mama a big house in the suburbs.

Oh, no.

She took him in off the street, and he ended up having her thrown back in the

street. And that's not cool.

Not cool at all.

And I couldn't believe that he did that. You bite the hand that feeds you?

I gave you a chance in life, and you did this to us?

Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Down a cobblestone lane, there's a wood frame home that belongs to Helen Ford.

With her late husband, Lou, Helen raised five children here.

But this widow's world is about to be turned upside down.

And then all of a sudden, one night...

I opened the door, and here's the constable saying, are you Helen Ford?

handed me this thing, and I opened it up.

I almost fell to the floor.

An eviction notice?

What?

What's going on?

Helen wonders if it has something to do with the loan she gave one of her sons,

the former NBA player Rumeel Robinson, a loan backed up by the value of her

home.

So I immediately called him on the phone.

Oh, no, Ma, I got it. I got it. I'll take care of it. I'll take care of it.

I said, Ramil, what's going on?

Ramil Robinson's I got it is an outright lie.

Before long, Helen is kicked to the curb.

I felt I left my family down.

I didn't know where I was going to go, what I was going to do.

Thirty years earlier, Helen and Lou Ford are well -known in Cambridge.

He's a mail carrier.

She's a high school safety officer.

In addition to their own five children, Helen and Lou take in dozens of foster

children over the years.

I've always had a motto that children are not a deck of cards.

Why should they be shuffled around?

That's my motto.

Helen volunteers at the Cambridge Community Center.

which runs after -school programs.

One day, a friend at the community center tells her about a young boy there

doesn't talk much but seems troubled.

He says his name is Ramil.

And he said, my mother don't want me.

My mother don't want me.

My mother don't want me. He kept saying it, and I said, wait, wait, wait, what

do you mean?

I don't live with my mom. My mama put me out. She just don't want me. I said,

well, where do you sleep?

Ramil tells Helen he climbs through windows to sleep inside buildings.

So I said, oh, how long have you been doing that?

Oh, about three weeks. I said, oh, that's not good. I said, well, when's

last time you ate?

He said, oh, about three weeks. And I said, that's it. You're coming home with

me.

Well, he ate like there was no tomorrow.

And I said, wow, I guess you haven't eaten in a while.

And I remember the meal distinctly. We had pork chops, mashed potatoes, and

string beans.

And he just devoured it.

The Fords learned that 10 -year -old Ramil Robinson was born in Jamaica and

raised there by his grandparents.

Ramil recently immigrated to Massachusetts to be with his mother, who

has no use for him.

The Fords feed, shelter, and care for Ramil for several months, and then a big

day. Helen has a custody hearing at the courthouse.

She wisely leaves Ramil at school to protect him from what surely would have

been a traumatic encounter with his birth mother.

And she walked in, and she said to the lady at the desk, where do I sign,

because I don't want them.

I looked. Oh, my goodness.

How do you do that?

I was devastated.

The juvenile officer turned to me and said, well, you got a son.

It was that quick.

Eventually, the Fords officially adopt Rameel Robinson.

His older brother, Donald Barrows, says Rameel excels in every sport he tries.

But in basketball...

Ramil Robinson is something special.

This here is St. Mary's Park, where we used to play our summer league

games and also just pick up games that sometimes got a little heated.

A lot of good fun.

And that's where he would come and showcase his skills, you know, all of

Ramil would come there and people would ooh and ah, and everybody would go there

and actually watch the summer games and watch and see what the talent is out

there doing.

And Rameel was one of the talents that had a lot of people over in our.

Rameel goes to Cambridge Bridge and Latin High School.

It's known for its storied basketball program, which produced NBA star Patrick

Ewing.

Under head coach Mike Jarvis, Rameel thrives.

Coach Jarvis tells American Greed.

that if he told his athletes to do 100 push -ups a day, Rameel would do many

more. I probably would just go and do 100 like Mike requested, and Rameel

just do it secretly. He'd probably do 300, 400, 500.

Rameel was just a workaholic. He was about developing his game and doing what

had to do to get his game off the bar, and he had that hunger for it.

The hard work pays off.

In 1986, Cambridge Ridge and Latin wins the state championship.

And I said, so what do you think you're going to do with yourself?

And he said, I want to go to the NBA.

I said, really? I said, well, if you believe, you will achieve.

Robinson signs on at the University of Michigan, ships off to Ann Arbor, and

quickly becomes a star player.

Michigan, at this point, has never won the NCAA championship, a sore point for

Michigan superfans like Dottie Day.

We're good. We're always good. We just need to get one little step better than

good. We need to get great.

In Rameel's junior year, the 1988 -89 season, fans like Day

dare to wonder, Could this be the year?

After going 24 -7 in the regular season, Michigan tears through the early rounds

of the NCAA tournament and reaches the Final Four.

Nobody gave them a chance.

Nobody thought that they would be here and look at them now.

You know the thing that says to take the village to raise a child? Well, I was

part of that little village that was.

helping Romeo succeed as well, you know. And when he got to that level and we

got to see him do what he was doing, it all made us all proud.

Helen and Lou Ford have limited means.

They decide that Helen will travel to Seattle for the final four and Lou will

stay with the kids and work.

Some fans in Cambridge have another idea.

What happened was they picked him up.

On his route, he called the post office, picked him up on his route.

The guy came up to him and said, Lou, you're getting on an airplane.

He said, to go where? What happened?

And he was just flabbergasted.

And the tears were coming down my face like, oh, my God, did these things

happen, you know?

So I was excited.

Monday, April 3rd, 1989.

Before the championship game against Seton Hall, Robinson feels like a kid at

Christmas.

You know, having that boyhood dream of having your first bike.

But that dream may be in jeopardy. After a back -and -forth game that ends in a

tie, the Wolverines trail 79 -78 in overtime.

With just seconds left in the game, Robinson gets his chance to leave his

on basketball history.

Five seconds.

Robinson goes in and fouled Paul with three seconds.

And he caught that foul at the end and got put on the free throw line. It was

like a nail biter, you know what I mean?

I mean, it seemed like forever.

I remember just watching him on the line. He seemed very poised because I

worried if he was going to be nervous to make the shots or not.

I told him, like, come on, please let this pay off for you. Please let this

off for you.

And then he shot the first one, and then that one went down, and I was like, all

right, now the game's tied.

Like, here you go, Rameel, this is it, right? Here you go, one more shot.

Rameel got ice running through his veins.

Calm, cool, and collected.

And then when that next one went through, it was just like pandemonium.

It's time for Michigan to win a national championship.

I don't know how to describe it other than that's what you play for.

Who would believe it? You know, shocked the world.

The champions go to the White House and meet President Bush.

And now, Rumeel, I have a prop for you, a basketball.

In Cambridge, the street where Helen and Lou Ford raised their family is renamed

Rumeel Robinson Place.

Rumeel even makes the cover of Sports Illustrated. I read this magazine all

time, and I always look at the cover.

And I'd say, oh, that's good, you know, this one made it, that one made it, you

know. But to see your own kid, it's like, wow, is this real?

In the NBA draft, Ramil Robinson is the 10th overall pick.

He goes to the Atlanta Hawks, and his future looks secure.

It's a story with heroic overtones.

A kid born into poverty and obscurity.

and abandoned by his mother at a tender age, has found a home in America and

made his audacious dream a reality.

Okay, you made it now. Here you go.

Let's show what you can do.

When American Greed returns, out of bounds and out of control.

Rameel's problem was reckless spending, and he fell in love with a stripper,

just like the song said.

That was his problem.

Selected by the Atlanta Hawks in the first round of the NBA draft, Rameel

Robinson has realized his childhood dream.

He moved to Atlanta, signed a contract worth $4 .3 million over four years.

and finally gets his piece of the pie.

I got there, and he's staying in this tri -level penthouse overlooking

Park. And I'm like, you know, I'm thinking back now, I'm like, okay, you

the saying, well, moving on up. I'm like, okay, wow, Rue, this is cool.

This is real cool.

The penthouse, though, is just a temporary crash pad.

Within a year, Robinson decamps to a leafy Atlanta suburb.

I was in a big, big house.

And I was in the state. It was a house.

There was a pool house. I could have lived in the pool house.

That's how big it was.

I'm like, Rue, what are you going to do with all this space, man? What do you

need all this space for?

R .D., you know, my boys, they all come up and...

I'm like, well, how often is that?

You know, you don't need all this space for that.

Well, the dogs... Rue,

what are you... These dogs don't need 11 ages.

All this land and... Oh, it was gorgeous.

It was really... I'd never seen anything like it.

Mm -hmm.

But his mom rarely visits.

And something happens to Ramil in Atlanta, though neither she nor anyone

the family can explain it.

But somehow, the good son becomes the prodigal son.

Robinson, they say, is a regular in Atlanta's strip clubs, where he can blow

several thousand dollars in a single night.

In fact, his brother says that sometimes after a night at a strip club, Robinson

takes several dancers home.

The strippers must be surprised when he shows them his room closet.

Have them, you know, throw on their birthday suits and clean his house and

pay them all another thousand dollars cash or whatever it was he was giving

them. He just recklessly spent their money.

Years later, in an ESPN program, Robinson looks back on those young and

days. We're coming out of college.

You know, we're going into the pros.

You're young kid with a lot of money.

What are you going to do? You're going to have a great time.

On the court, Robinson struggles.

He's not the dominant player he was in high school and college.

And his brother says he clashes with coaches.

Remember, Mel didn't understand he was very talented as a player, but when you

get to that level, you're not the only one.

You're not the only one. You're one of many, and you can be replaced just like

that, and that's exactly what they did.

Over seven seasons, Robinson pinballs around the NBA.

Atlanta, New Jersey, Charlotte, Portland, Los Angeles,

Phoenix.

By 2002, the journeyman is long gone from the NBA and now plays for smaller

teams in Italy and Croatia.

It's a tough road for him as he confides to friend Marshall Jones.

There was a time he called me and he was like, yo, D, they already left me. I'm

like, what do you mean they left you? At the hotel, man.

They just got on the bus and left.

So I said, why did they leave you?

He's like, man, I didn't want to get on the bus because it takes too long.

I said, Ruse, what do you mean you don't want to get on the bus, man?

That's how they travel over there, you know?

He's like, yo, nah, man, you look over these cliffs and this and that. I'm

Ruse, man, you have to do what the team does.

You know, you can't just make up your own, you know, your own rules.

It's obvious his heart isn't in it anymore.

His career is done.

At that point in time, I think.

That's when he said, you know what, let me close the book of trying to play

basketball and let me move on to some other business ventures.

When American Greed Returns reveals plan to give back.

And he said, when the project is completed, he said, you're going to be a

woman.

His basketball dream over, Ramil Robinson sells his Atlanta mansion and

in Miami.

Here, he hatches a new plan.

It harks back to his roots in Jamaica.

Robinson envisions building a world -class mega resort on Jamaica's North

It is called Harmony Cove.

This was going to be a 2 ,000 -plus acre.

oceanfront resort development in Jamaica, unlike anything that the

It was to be the flagship resort there.

You're talking about building a billion -dollar resort, golf courses, dredging a

harbor so that cruise ships can come in.

Robinson forms a company, Megalodon Development.

But the development team he assembles isn't exactly all -star talent.

All he'd ever done was be a basketball player.

His partner, well, wants for a living.

There just wasn't anyone there that had any kind of experience doing anything

close to this.

An experience be damned, Ramil Robinson begins to energetically solicit

investors in Miami.

And he also taps his family network.

He asked me.

how much something about the equity in my mom's house, how much equity is in

house. And I was like, how would I know? I don't know that. You need to talk to

her about that.

And he said, Mom, I need your help. I said, what's going on?

Robinson flies to Boston and unveils his plans.

And he had all the plans and everything, and he laid it all out on the table and

looking at this stuff and looking at all these different aspects and, you know,

looked pretty good.

I said, well, I don't have any money.

And so he said, well, what about the house? Can you put the house?

I can hear my late husband always said, always help our children.

I could hear him saying, help our son.

So I said, yeah.

At the time, Helen's house is paid off.

She agrees to take out a mortgage for $600 ,000.

and loan the proceeds to Ramil as seed money for his development.

He promises to cover all the monthly payments.

And he said, when the project is completed, he said,

you're going to be a rich woman. He says, I'm going to give you half a

dollars. You can do whatever you want with it. Thanks, Mom, and whatever.

I said, oh, okay.

So I believed it.

I believed it.

When you first hear the story, it's so improbable that you think that that's

just made up, that that's a con.

But as it turned out, it wasn't. There was a real live project called Harmony

Cove and that the Jamaican government really wanted to build this billion

-dollar resort and that somebody actually had contacted him.

He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, had an NBA career, he had

And so apparently somebody thought it was a good idea to involve him.

But it's not such a good idea.

And there are several important points Ramil forgot to tell his mother,

according to FBI Special Agent Kevin Kohler.

First of all, he has no money. He has no income. He has no meaningful assets

that he can pledge as collateral.

He has a terrible credit history.

And without Helen knowing, Robinson steals her house right out from under

What she doesn't realize is that he has arranged to have the title of the

property transferred over to one of his business associates.

The associate takes out a $500 ,000 mortgage on the property.

Nearly all of that money goes to Ramil.

A couple months later, the property is refinanced for $625 ,000 and transferred

to another business partner.

The loan applications for these transactions are replete with lies about

will live in the home and how much it's worth.

He defrauded these banks. They loaned money on a house that wasn't worth near

what the bank believed it was.

A few months later, the house is flipped for a third time.

This time for $1 million.

So in a matter of about a year, this house that has no debt on it and is

about $400 ,000 now has a million dollars of debt.

And nearly all of that money had gone to Rumil.

Very little was spent on Megalodon or to further this Harmony Cove venture that

Megalodon was involved in, even though that is what he had promised his mom.

What's more, the proceeds of Helen's home aren't nearly enough to satisfy

Next on American Greed, see how Robinson swings open the vault of a small bank

in the middle of Iowa.

And later, hear what little regard Robinson has for his mother's home.

Listen, you don't live by a house a lot. A house don't make a man or a woman.

Ramil Robinson is not the first former NBA player to blow his money on

strippers, cigars, and fast cars.

But what sets him apart from some other broke athletes is his willingness to

turn to crime to grab the almighty dollar.

Through A Friend of a Friend, Robinson meets a loan officer at a small bank in

suburb of Des Moines, Iowa.

This lone officer, who has agreed to talk to American Greed anonymously, is a

former college basketball player.

And basketball talk is how the two men hit it off when Robertson calls the lone

officer from Miami.

I think I was a lot starstruck at first.

When somebody has made it to the level that he made it, and I had aspirations

get there myself at one point in time, I gave it.

more credibility than I could have.

Robinson tells the loan officer he's on the cusp of getting a big infusion of

development funds to build his green mega resort in Jamaica.

Until that ship comes in, he just needs a small bridge loan to produce

promotional materials and business plans.

But to hear him talk, it was, you know, the path had already been established

and the road was paved.

That was the first thing that I remember really jumping out. It was like, wow,

this thing's, you know, it's ready to go.

Robinson applies for a $377 ,000 loan.

But the FBI says Ramil grows frustrated at how long the loan process is taking.

To speed things up, he proposes paying $100 ,000 of the loan back to the

loan officer.

He knew the loan officer was strapped himself for money. He was living beyond

his means.

He had a fair amount of consumer debt.

And so when Ramil proposed paying him a portion of these loan proceeds, it

seemed attractive.

That's where the greed part, I guess, comes in in the story.

Everybody has greed.

Robinson nets $277 ,000.

It should last a while, right?

Within two months, he's spent it all. He makes a $25 ,000 payment on a condo for

himself and his girlfriend.

He spends $35 ,000 furnishing the condo with high -end electronics, with

designer furniture.

He purchases a couple Mercedes -Benzes.

He spends large amounts of money at cigar shops, designer clothing shops, at

strip clubs.

He spends all of that in about two months.

Robinson never makes a single repayment to the bank.

Yet he brazenly calls the officer again and again asking for more.

But that initial kickback that's paid opens up the vault to the bank.

And the bank continues to loan money because of this loan officer who's taken

the kickback.

In short order, there's a loan for $80 ,000, then $150 ,000.

111 ,000 and 495 ,000.

Special Agent Kohler says that a measly 5 % of the proceeds go where they're

supposed to, to business development for Harmony Cove.

With the rest, Robinson puts on a clinic of self -indulgence.

And as you scan through what he's spending it on, here's just a single

$111 ,000.

in withdrawals and spending at restaurants and jewelry stores and such.

heavy strip club traffic in this month.

Robinson is spending so much, he can't possibly make good on his promise to his

mom.

Which brings us to that fateful day in Cambridge.

I opened the door and here's the constable saying, are you Helen Ford?

Ramil's mortgage on his mom's house is months overdue.

And Helen is evicted from the home she has lived in for more than 30 years.

Never thought anything like that was ever going to happen.

Never.

And I couldn't believe that he did that. The person, the hand, you bite the hand

that feeds you.

I gave you a chance in life, and you did this to us?

Helen is distraught and crying when she enters the office of Dennis Benson, a

lawyer who grew up in the neighborhood and spent many hours of his boyhood at

her home.

And I said to her that I generally don't take on those kinds of cases, but I

wanted to help her. And it was one of those moments where a client, touches

at your core.

Dennis files suit against American Home Mortgage, saying they were negligent in

not seeing the fraud.

Helen dispatches her son Donald to Miami to find out what Ramil is doing and if

there's any way she can get her money and her home back.

When American Greed returns.

It's a sad thing to me to go from being one who's being looked up to to be the

one who's being looked for.

Want inside information from the show?

Join the Greed Social Network.

Like us on American Greed's Facebook page. We'll be right back.

Donald Barrows arrives in Miami looking for answers.

and looking for his brother, Rameel Robinson.

His first stop is Rameel's luxury condo in a private gated community called

Williams Island.

Knocking on the door, there's no answer.

And there was a big space underneath the door, so I got down on the ground and I

looked under there and I could tell that the place was empty.

And I actually, like, yelled Rameel under the door and you just hear the

just going throughout the whole place.

Where'd he go?

Donald plays gumshoe detective hitting high -end bars and restaurants in South

Beach, where Rameel might hang out.

Eventually, Donald gets a cell phone number and calls Rameel, who agrees to

him up.

So he comes and he picks me up in this really nice car, like over $100 ,000

Mercedes -Benz.

And we're riding. We weren't even in the car for 20 minutes. And he turns to me

and he's like, do you have $20 for gas?

The next night at dinner, it's the same song and dance.

And then he turned and he looked at me and he had the same look in his eye as

the night before when he asked me for the $20 for gas.

And I knew it was going on right away. And I was like, you know what, Ramil?

Yeah, unbelievable.

Come to find out, Ramil didn't have the money to pay the restaurant bill.

Turns out Robinson has been evicted from Williams Island.

And he's now living on this dingy block of cheap hotels in North Miami Beach.

He rents a single room, sponging off his girlfriend, who makes her money doing,

what else, dancing in strip clubs.

From Williams Island? Yeah, a big come down.

A big come down. And if he's living like this, then how's he going to be able to

do what he said he's going to do?

Donald pushes Ramil to scrape together enough cash to pay creditors so their

can get her house back.

But there's no squeezing blood from this turnip. By that time, Ramil was so poor

he couldn't even pay attention.

Back in Cambridge, Helen Ford, now alone, has moved into a small apartment.

Her former home is vacant, except for the occasional squatter.

One day, to publicize her plight, she and her attorney, Dennis Benson, take an

ESPN reporter through the home.

When I walked up the driveway, I could hear my husband's voice

telling me it would be okay.

He said, Helen?

You're a strong woman. Keep your head up.

God's going to take care of you.

I said, thank you.

And then when I got to the stairs and I opened the door and I looked in and I

said, wow, this was once mine, no longer mine.

I remember walking into Romero's room and seeing the memorabilia.

And the trophies and the dust.

I felt the pain that Helen felt and the disappointment.

A terrible experience.

And I hope nobody else has to go through that ever again.

Because when you give your all to someone who you didn't even know, you

welcomed them into your bosom and your family.

And I never mentioned him or introduced him to people as my foster son. This

is my son.

And I think that's the part that hurts.

In Des Moines, Iowa, the loan officer is freaking out.

Adam, I'm on him every day. You've got to get these loans paid back.

Once a true believer in Harmony Cove, the banker finally wakes from his pipe

dream. My mistake in this, my biggest mistake in this whole thing, was at that

point in time, I had the opportunity to switch on the light and tell everybody,

hey, there's probably something wrong with this that, you know, I wasn't aware

of.

We need to, you know, really, really hammer into this. Instead, I tried to

it.

Fix it by trying to hide the bad loans.

His sleight of hand fools no one.

And ultimately that's how it gets discovered by the bank is one of the

officer's subordinates becomes concerned as she sees this practice of him

rolling interest and penalties into the principal and then rolling it into a new

loan.

She blows the whistle, and the officer is fired.

But that's just the beginning.

The kickback is a federal crime.

In September 2009, both Ramil Robinson and the loan officer are arrested for

conspiracy to commit bank fraud and bank bribery, among other charges.

When American Greed returns.

See how much Robinson really cares about the neighborhood that saved him.

They got my name on it.

Whoopee.

That's how much I care about my name being on a street.

In Des Moines, Iowa, Rameel Robinson stands trial for bilking Community State

Bank out of $1 .2 million so he could live life like the high flyer he once

Keith Rigg is Robinson's defense attorney.

Basically, the defense had to be convincing the jury there was a level of

incompetence there which took this out of being criminal.

And into basically just being stupid.

But the feds say incompetence is no excuse.

So Ramil was not prosecuted and convicted because he was a bad

There are many bad businessmen who don't violate the law. But what made this a

crime was he repeatedly made false statements to the bank. And then above

beyond that was the very significant act of.

bribing or paying a kickback to a loan officer.

In an unusual twist, the defendant's own mother testifies against him.

The sense of betrayal that Helen Ford felt was profound because here was this

young man that she cared for, she loved, she supported.

To find herself in a court of law testifying against him was something

her apart.

That was, I think, when it all hit me.

How could he do this to me and my family?

And so through sobs on the witness stand, she explained her current

and circumstances.

And Ramil sat and watched all this. The jurors were quite moved, it appeared, by

her testimony.

It takes the jury three hours to render its verdict.

Guilty on all counts.

Pending his sentencing hearing, Robinson is out on bond.

During that time, he speaks with the ESPN program E60, and he napalms any

bridge he had with his family.

Listen, you don't live by a house a lot. A house don't make a man or a woman.

But if that's the only thing you think you have, maybe you should have went to

college and learned to study seven subjects.

Or five subjects. You just took five subjects and not just did one thing in

life.

What he didn't realize is at the age, you know, of 50 years old, my mother did

go back to school and got a master's degree in education.

You know, devastating to me to hear him talk like that about her.

After all the sacrifices I know that she made for him.

I don't care about anybody but himself.

Three months later, at his sentencing hearing, the prosecution plays the

in open court.

Helen's always known that I never liked that house anyways, Jeff.

Okay? They got my name on it.

Whoopee!

That's how much I care about my name being on the street.

But it's hurtful to hear him say that he didn't like that, I never liked that

house. Really?

Well, you never showed it. You never showed it.

This changed.

I just, it's mind -boggling.

Before he sentences the defendant, the judge gives Robinson a chance to address

the court.

My standard advice to people is, you are going to say something. Once you get

much past, I'm really sorry.

Sometimes things can go a little sideways.

In an emotional, incoherent rant.

Robinson says he was convicted because his attorney is incompetent, and it

doesn't end there.

Robinson also accuses the judge, the Honorable Ronald Longstaff, of being

corrupt. He made a bad situation much worse.

When Robinson is finished, all eyes turn to the judge to see his reaction.

And it was really interesting because he kind of got a hint of a smile on his

face. It certainly clarified things for him. And he didn't get angry at all.

Once he was done, said you'd made what was a hard decision simple.

The judge says, by your statement today, you demonstrate to me absolutely no

remorse.

Told him that money is like a drug to you, Ramil. And just like that, Ramil

Robinson, the Caribbean cast -off who realized his dream in the NBA,

is given the stiffest sentence available, six and a half years in

You know, he was blessed.

You know, he was a blessed athlete.

He had a blessed family.

He had great friends.

It's never too late to really reflect and to take responsibility and try to

rebuild your life.

And I think that's the part of his life that probably has to wrestle a little

bit more with.

The lone officer pleads guilty and is sentenced to two years in prison.

In 2013, Helen Ford gets her house back.

Dennis Benson negotiates a settlement with American Home Mortgage, the company

that greenlit the fraud.

As long as she stays current, paying for the home that was already paid off,

Helen can stay there for the rest of her life.

But I made it.

I made it.

I made it, and God is good.

All the time.

Because I'm still alive.

And I'm back home.

I'm back home.

A sign on the street now reads, Helen and Lewis Ford Square.

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