Landlord Accused Of Abuse Is Also Plagued By Debt

By VALERIE KALFRIN The Tampa Tribune

Published: Aug 18, 2007

TAMPA - Daphne Jones sat in court this week with her hands in her lap, silver polish brightening her fingernails. She drives a convertible PT Cruiser. She lives along the Hillsborough River in a house worth $585,000 behind an ornate metal fence.

She can't pay for this image, court papers show.

Jones, 37, is under investigation by Tampa police and the state Agency for Health Care Administration, which says she moved tenants from her state-registered "adult family care home" in the palatial house by the river to an overcrowded boarding house without air conditioning in West Tampa.

Police charged her Aug. 9 with 18 felony counts of aggravated "adult abuse negligence" after finding 18 tenants, several elderly and disabled, living in space allotted for six.

Free on bail, Jones has declined to discuss her arrest. Friday, attorney Rick Escobar contested the allegations, saying, "That is absolutely ludicrous" that Jones moved tenants from one facility to the other.

Conditions at the boarding house at 2347 W. Beach St. are not as bad as authorities depicted, Escobar added. His investigators visited the building, which has two air conditioning units, one for the upstairs and one for downstairs, he said.

There are poor people living in Tampa who don't have the luxury of air conditioning, among other amenities, Escobar said. "This is a boarding home in a poor community that caters to individuals that are either homeless or have nowhere else to go," he said. "This is not a nursing home. This is not an adult living facility. … It is what it is. It is a not a Marriott. … I would much rather have an individual in this facility than sleeping under the expressway."

The current case is the latest legal problem for Jones, who has been plagued by them for at least six years, public records show. Since 2001, she has defaulted on four mortgages, failed to repay business and car loans, and repeatedly dodged officials trying to serve her with subpoenas. She has filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection four times but was delinquent in payments or in filing appropriate paperwork and denied this relief.

As for her criminal record, Jones pleaded guilty in 2002 to a federal charge of bilking the Social Security Administration out of $41,000 in benefits for her disabled son.

Jones defaulted on the mortgage on the boarding house in 2002, court records show. This building also contains her hair salon, Daphne's Upscale Studio, which has defaulted on a $50,000 line of credit. Jones also has defaulted on a mortgage on the 4,475-square-foot house by the river at 5608 Puritan Road, court papers show.

Public records show both properties are owned by Katie Jorden, Jones' grandmother, and came into Jorden's hands through quitclaim deeds in which Jones surrendered ownership. Both properties also have delinquent tax bills from at least 2005, public records show.

Boarding House Cited As Illegal

Since Jones' arrest, code enforcement has cited the boarding house, which was licensed by the state, as illegal for not being authorized in a "commercial-intensive" zone. The Agency for Health Care Administration has prohibited Jones from taking in patients at the Puritan Road house, which is licensed for five, until its investigation is completed.

Jones appeared in court Monday, where a general magistrate agreed to extend child support for the son she has with her ex-husband, former Devil Rays pitcher Keith "Kiki" Jones, past the boy's 18th birthday. Now 12, the child suffers from cerebral palsy and never will be self-sufficient, Daphne Jones testified. She told the magistrate about his medical needs, including five doctors.

"I totally lift him by myself," she said, describing the need for a mechanized lift in her home. "He's sixty-five pounds. I'm one-hundred-ten soaking wet."

Kiki Jones did not appear at the hearing.

Daphne Jones also testified about her gross income: $6,000 a month, including wages and tips from her hair salon and $3,000 in "gift support" from her family.

She did not mention the boarding house or the adult family care home.

The Puritan Road house has a tangled mortgage history. Daphne Jones bought the property in 2000 for $85,000, then sold it to her grandmother on July 23, 2001, through a quitclaim deed, which was recorded in county records two days later.

The following month, Jones obtained a $350,000 mortgage on the house through Yale Mortgage Corp., records show.

Doug Pollock, president of Sanford-based Information Data Services, which investigates problem mortgages, said a bank wouldn't have given Jones a loan if it didn't think she owned the property. There is sometimes a lag between when a deed is recorded and when it is published for the public to see, he said. It's possible the deed wasn't available to the title company to view before Jones took out her mortgage, or the title company made a mistake, he said.

Jones defaulted on the mortgage in July 2002. In 2004, she said in court papers she "was not aware of signing a mortgage" for the house, even though the court case file includes a document labeled "mortgage deed." Jones said Jorden was the true owner, citing the 2001 quitclaim deed.

Jones' attorney in that case, Thomas Rutherford, withdrew as her attorney two months after Jones made that statement, citing "irreconcilable differences." The case was dismissed that same year.

Numerous Defaults Recorded

Public records outline other issues. In 2001, shortly before she and Kiki Jones filed for divorce, both of them defaulted on a $49,500 mortgage on a property at 1119 Arch St. and a $140,200 mortgage for an apartment building at 905 E. Sligh Ave. Both properties later were sold in foreclosure.

Over the next few years, Daphne Jones was sued for $5,000 for failing to pay to have windows installed and for about $9,000 for unpaid roofing work. Home Depot, Bay Gulf Credit Union and Suncoast Schools Federal Credit Union each sued her for unpaid credit-card payments. Huntington National Bank said she defaulted on a credit line worth about $50,000 for her hair salon. She defaulted on payments for a $51,000 Cadillac Escalade and a $243,000 mortgage for the Beach Street building, court records show.

Process servers had trouble locating Jones to deliver her subpoenas. One noted in court papers that "current resident Michelle Kane" at the Puritan Road address said Jones had moved. Another filed an affidavit that Jones was avoiding service.

Jones filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection four times, in 2002, 2003 and twice in 2004. Each time, the cases were dismissed without granting Jones' suggested payment plan. In 2002, the plan did not list all her assets, a federal trustee assigned to the case noted in court papers. In 2003, she was delinquent in paying the trustee. In June 2004, she failed to file adequate paperwork listing her creditors and financial affairs, and in November 2004, she missed a required meeting with her creditors, court records show.

County court records say the company that financed the window installation recovered costs after Jones' 2002 bankruptcy filing. Huntington National Bank dismissed its case against her after that filing. The county courts dismissed the cases brought by Suncoast, Home Depot and Cadillac after there were no signs of prosecution in the files after a year.

There have been recent filings in other cases. In the roofing lawsuit, Jones was found in contempt of court in 2006 for not appearing for a deposition, court papers show. A debt collector for Bay Gulf Credit Union also sought to subpoena Jones in 2006 for information about her finances.

Reporters Karen Branch-Brioso and Shannon Behnken contributed to this report. Reporter Valerie Kalfrin can be reached at (813) 259-7800 or vkalfrin@tampatrib .com.