Real estate chief targets kickbacks

John Rebchook, Rocky Mountain News

Saturday, October 7, 2006

Fifteen months ago, Erin Toll, then Colorado's deputy insurance commissioner, was riding her tricked-out road bike from her home in southeast Denver to her office in downtown Denver, when she was flagged down near the Cherry Creek shopping center by Tom Norton, head of the Colorado Department of Transportation.

Norton had called 911 on his cell phone after a jogger collapsed on the Cherry Creek bike path.

Toll, trained in CPR, turned the jogger over onto his back. Toll learned later he was a Manhattan-based developer, Chuck Mayhew, who was in Denver to sell the Seasons at Cherry Creek apartments.

Mayhew's face was purple and covered with blood from the impact of his fall following a heart attack.

But Toll didn't hesitate in giving him mouth to mouth resuscitation and pounding on his chest.

"Erin is a goddess in my book," said Mayhew's wife, Mary. "She saved my husband's life."

Today many hope Toll is breathing life into Denver's real estate industry after she was appointed director of the Colorado Division of Real Estate.

Toll plans to go after appraisers who inflate real estate values with the same gusto she went after title insurance companies that gave illegal kickbacks to people in the real estate industry while she was in her previous role at the insurance commission.

Inflated appraisals are seen as one of the primary contributors to Colorado's dubious distinction of having the highest foreclosure rate in the nation, according to national reports.

Toll recently sat down with the Rocky Mountain News to discuss her new job.

Why did you take the real estate division job after you had carved out a national reputation investigating illegal kickbacks in the title insurance industry?

There is a real dearth of female role models where the women at the top are still feminine. One of those is Tambor Williams (executive director of the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies). Tambor has long been a mentor. Now, I have a chance to work directly for her.

What have you been doing in your first few days at the real estate division?

This is one of those incredibly rare opportunities in state government where you can build a team.

It is very expensive to fire and terminate state employees. But after I accepted the job I learned that the division is going through a big reorganization.

That is about the only way you can get the dead weight out of the organization.

How big is your staff?

It's about 36. After the reorganization it will be a little smaller - 34 or 35. But I'll be replacing about 12 people. . . . On my first day, I promoted one person. I think people were surprised by how quickly I moved.

Are you concerned that there still may be loose ends as far as the title insurance investigation?

Tambor will make sure the commission finishes some of the things I started, one of those being the kickback issue.

But one of the things that always bothered me was that it looked like I was just picking on the title insurance industry. And they were just one of the players in the whole residential real estate closing process.

You also have mortgage brokers and real estate agents and appraisers. I was adamant that I wanted to go after everyone who was getting kickbacks, not just the ones who were handing them out.

You said you plan to "triage" cases based on their importance. What are your priorities?

Our biggest focus is on the real estate appraiser side. We thought the best way to stop mortgage fraud and address our abysmal foreclosure rate is to really crack down on the appraisers who are inflating property values.

What tools do you have to go after them?

We can take their license away.

Has that ever been done in Colorado before?

Not that I know of.

Why weren't appraisers pursued in the past?

I don't think it is the fault of the staff. They were never told to. It seems like they used to go after things on a first-come, first-served basis or do what was easiest first and let the difficult ones gather dust in a drawer.

I want them to go after the hard stuff - the heart attacks, instead of the colds, you might say, to keep that triage analogy going.

Erin Toll

• Age: 45

• Hometown: Staten Island, N.Y. Grew up in the New York-New Jersey area.

• Title: Appointed director of the Colorado Division of Real Estate on Sept. 5.

• Education: Undergraduate degree, University of Colorado; law degree, University of Virginia.

• Family: Three sons, ages 2, 14 and 16. Married to lawyer Joe Glover.

• First job: Title insurance research in New Jersey at about age 15, which became helpful when she investigated kickbacks in title insurance as the state's deputy insurance commissioner.

• Three people she would invite to a dinner party: Madonna, because she pushes boundaries; Missy Giove, the downhill mountain bike racer; and Ayn Rand, author of the novel Atlas Shrugged.

rebchookj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5207