Investment firm Atalaya has agreed to pay more than $2.7 million to settle claims that it provided financing to Vision Property Management, which was the target of a recent lawsuit from New York state for allegedly operating an illegal, unlicensed mortgage-lending business.

Vision was accused in the suit of selling homes in need of severe repair to consumers without telling buyers about the unsafe conditions documented about the property.

For at least 108 of those transactions, Vision allegedly using financing from Atalaya. As part of the settlement, the company agreed to pay $20,000 in consumer restitution for each of those properties, according to the New York State Department of Financial Services.

Atalaya, according to the settlement, will be sending that payment directly to affected consumers, who don't have to take any action to receive that payment. Restitution will total $2.4 million of the settlement.

"This settlement will help put an end to Vision's illegal and predatory operations, which were facilitated by investments from Atalaya, and provides a measure of restitution to New York consumers who were left holding the bag with further debt, uninhabitable properties and broken dreams," said DFS Superintendent Linda Lacewell.

The remainder of the settlement will be paid to the state as a civil penalty and other relief. Atalaya has also agreed to cooperate with DFS and the New York Attorney General's Office in their litigation against Vision.

"Not only are we ensuring that Atalaya will no longer be able to invest in or assist Vision Property Management's illegal, deceptive, or abusive schemes that targeted New Yorkers, but, today, we are finally providing their innocent victims with some semblance of restitution," Attorney General Letitia James said.

Atalaya was represented in the settlement by Sean Hecker, a partner at Kaplan, Hecker & Fink.

Hecker said in a statement that, while Atalaya took the matter seriously, the investment company wasn't involved in what Vision was alleged to have done by the state. When the company learned that Vision's operations were being questioned, it immediately stopped doing business with them.

"Atalaya is an investment management firm—it invests capital on behalf of itself and groups of investors in other companies. It does diligence about those companies, and gets and follows legal advice, before investing," Hecker said. "But it doesn't operate the businesses in which it invests. That is true of all of Atalaya's investments, including in Vision Property Management."

While Atalaya agreed to settle the claims, the company neither admitted nor denied any wrongdoing, according to the settlement agreement.

Vision was accused by state officials earlier this month of taking advantage of low-income individuals by buying severely distressed properties and selling them in a lease-to-own fashion to aspiring home buyers.

Those homes, while less expensive than others, would still be marked up from their value by Vision, the state alleged. New homeowners would then spend money trying to repair the home, while making payments to eventually own it outright.

That spurred a number of situations where consumers were evicted by Vision for falling behind on payments. The state claimed that those consumers fell behind because they were spending money on repairs they didn't know about until they agreed to lease the home from Vision.

The company's data indicated that more than 40% of the seller-financing agreements it signed with New York consumers ended in an eviction or surrender of the property, according to the lawsuit.

Vision made about 150 loans that qualify as subprime home loans under New York law, according to the state, most of which also qualified as high-cost loans. But, in doing so, the company failed to comply with the state's banking law, according to the suit.

Vision is represented in the litigation by Michael Choy and Thomas Potter from Burr & Forman in Birmingham, Alabama and Nashville, Tennessee, respectively, according to court filings. Neither attorney immediately responded to a request for comment on the settlement.

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