BEFORE Finsac Mecheck Willis was living comfortably with his wife and five children in his four-bedroom, two-bathroom house on Patrick Drive, St Andrew.

His thriving business, which employed three people, also afforded him to hire a full-time household helper.

Now the lifestyle of the ailing 64-year-old is a far cry from what it was: He lives in a one-room, wood-zinc-and-cloth shack in a depressed community in the Six Miles area of St Andrew, his wife has since died, his family torn apart, his children’s education has been disrupted and he has to rely on his church and Good Samaritans for meals.

“One of the thing now in the Finsac inquiry,” Willis told the Jamaica Observer last Thursday, “Mr Omar Davies said what happen to me shouldn’t happen, because there was a window of opportunity where people like me house shouldn’t sell and I questioned him on it in the 2009 inquiry.”

“So I think that by this they would have done something for me already. And they don’t want to come out with the result of the inquiry so that everybody can get to know what they can do about it,” he said.

“I believe the Government should be responsible for me because my house is directly ‘tief dem ‘tief mi house. But is because I didn’t know all that was happening. So by the time I start to act on it they say six years pass so they can’t do anything. The lawyer that I was dealing with put me in this dilemma because he did not do what he was supposed to do,” he said.

Willis’s challenges started out quite innocently.

“I used to do sales work and I took out a little loan from a bank — Eagle Commercial and then Island Life Merchant Bank. The bank manager at Island Life was at Eagle first then he moved to Island Life Merchant Bank and he took the account with him,” Willis explained. “He mislead me in the way he was dealing with the account.”

At the time, Willis said he was doing good business selling raw materials, sheets and clothing at the Flea Market in Kingston and across the island, and so was encouraged by a friend to grow the business even more by taking out a loan.

“She introduced me to the insurance policy and said I could use the policy to get a loan to expand the business and even open a shop. So the way she explained it I decided to do that.”

He was then introduced to a bank manager but was informed by him that the policy was too young to do the loan, so he asked if he had any other assets. Willis said he told him about the title for his house, which he determined to be a big mistake.

He was encouraged to use the house as collateral and so he took out a loan of $100,000 against it. His business had expanded as a result and within a short time he offered to clear up his debt.

“When I find out that the business was doing well with the $100,000 I took from him, I went back to him and told him that I would clear off the loan, but he said I didn’t need to do that but that I should let it continue and he would do a chequing account for me. This account was like a revolving account, and he said I wouldn’t have to draw from the loan but it would just be a guarantee so that when I needed money I could just draw the amount that I need, and if I pay it back quick enough that money wouldn’t grow any great amount of interest. So we did an agreement for $200,000. But I didn’t have to use any of that money. That agreement was only for one year and after that we would renew it.”

He was then offered more money by the man he identified as the manager of the bank at the time. A new agreement was now drawn up at Island Life Merchant Bank for $1 million, Willis explained. He said the manager told him that he would keep a half of the amount to cover the cost of any money that may incur and needed to be cleared at his former bank.

“Which there was none, but I was kind of ignorant at the time of that kind of business,” stated Willis, who had a pile of documents stamped and signed to prove his story.

He said that the loan was cut in two, one part acted as a revolving loan and the other as a regular loan. But he again explained that he didn’t have to use up any of this money since his business had grown so much it was able to sustain itself.

He was now selling in busy towns like Falmouth and Ocho Rios, supplying table cloths, kitchen towels and uniforms to hotels, insurance companies, banks, and JUTA. He said he would make between $100,000 and $150,000 from each establishment he supplied.

Willis said that four months after taking out the last loan he starting receiving letters from the bank stating that his loans were not being serviced. However, he said this was far from the truth as he would give the manager cheques on a regular basis to deposit to his account.

“The first amount I took from Island Life was $50,000, another $80,000 and the last valued at $200,000,” Willis said. “Plus the $100,000 that I had taken from Eagle and cleared up.”

After receiving a number of letters from the bank he decided to get a lawyer and go in to check on the account. It was then that he discovered that $1.2 million was lodged to the title along with another $700,000 and a third entry of $400,000 by both banks at different intervals.

Willis said he knew nothing of this.

“Because I was ignorant of what was going on I try to pay to clear up myself after they wrote some threatening letters about taking away the house,” Willis said. “So within a year and six months I paid back to Island Life $1.5 million. I told the lawyer to file the matter before the court for me, but he didn’t do anything about it.”

If that was not enough, in 2001 Willis met in a motor vehicle accident while on his way to St Ann’s Bay after an under-aged youth driving his parents vehicle crashed into him. The boy died on the spot while Willis’s right leg was broken in three places and his hip dislocated.

This resulted in his admission in the hospital for two months, undergoing three operations and paying out approximately $500,000, and left with a $190,000 bill after he was discharged. This, he said, has still not being paid even after threats from the hospital as he was genuinely unable to do so as he was drained financially.

Today, Willis hobbles on crutches following a fourth operation at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) after having to redo the operation that he did three times before at other private hospitals. As a result, he also now has a balance of $300,000 at UHWI that he is also unable to pay.

He said although his vehicle was fully insured and up to date, he was told by the court at the time that the youth was underage and so he could not get compensation.

And, as if that was not bad enough, Willis was home recouperating from his accident on the day bailiffs entered his house and put himself and his family out on the street.

“I was on my bed, I could not walk and one day I was there and by now Finsac had taken over the loan portfolio and they started writing me some letters. They had taken over the bank that I had the loan and they sent some people to come look at the house. I was out for seven months because I had some straps from my hip to my leg. He told me that they were only looking at the house but that they were not going to sell it,” he said. “I asked a lawyer to write them and I called and told them about my accident and that I can’t move and can’t do anything and referred to the irregularities in my case. But despite all of that they ignored me, until one day in 2004 I see other persons come and they started to measure up the place and so on. But they had said they not selling it so I thought they would come back to me or something.”

However, one day in 2005 Willis received a letter stating that the house was sold and who it was sold to — a house he had bought and occupied for 25 years.

“This is a house that I worked and bought and fixed up and added on to. I was living there for 25 years. My entire family was there — five kids and four other little ones that my wife was taking care of — her sister’s children,” he said.

He said before that he had received a letter stating that he owed $11 million on the house when all he took from that bank was $330,000 in total. He said the house was sold for $3.5 million though by then it would have valued over $11 million.

He then received notice to evacuate the house, but got another lawyer to file a suit based on fraudulent sale and was told that things would be okay.

However, on the May 4, 2007 he was lying down with his wife and two-months-old granddaughter in bed when his 23-year-old son ran inside and told him that men were in the house putting his stuff on the street.

The family was left in the cold, all their possessions of 25 years were lining Patrick Drive and they had nowhere to go.

“About two chains down the road you could see the things line out — children’s beds, books, everything, goods that I had bought to sell, you name it. And so I rushed out to find the lawyer but he told me he could do nothing. When I came back, my wife just stood under a big mango tree trembling. As I come back in the yard is like bad luck — one shower of rain come down. The rain fall that day until when you look, there is a gully beside it and it come over. All of us were outside and we run go in a neighbour’s garage to shelter from the rain. One neighbour saw what was happening and he gave me some tarpaulin and we threw over some of the things. We had to sleep in the garage for about a week and try to retrieve some to the things. We had to let some of the children go to some neighbours and so on. But me, my wife and three of the children who could hold, stay in the garage.”

Since then the family scattered and moved around the Corporate Area trying desperate to find comfort again.

Willis said that three years ago his wife died from what he believed was stress, as the living conditions, among everything else, were too much for her to bear.

“I would like them to address the Finsac part of it because they are the ones who took away the house,” he said. “I have papers to show where I was trying to negotiate with Island Life before Finsac stepped in. If they did not step in and took away the account from the bank we would have negotiated with the bank and amend the wrong. But they came in and took over everything and just sell out everybody property and leave us like that.”

Willis, who is staying in a depressed community, said that if he could get $60,000 he would start to put himself back together as he could use that money to purchase material to help himself.

“I could sell and turn it over so I could probably purchase a little place they have selling next door and even fix it up the little place and go on live for the time being until maybe better will come one day. When you have to depend on people it is not easy. I am not a lazy man, so if I have to go out and beg somebody something it is a pain to me,” he declared.