Juan Amon says he purchased a Victorian-style home in the Springs section of East Hampton for $800,000 in 2020. It was the home of Amon's 14-year-old son John's dreams, with multiple floors and an in-ground pool in the backyard. 

"All our efforts, and all our money is invested in there," Amon said Wednesday, speaking in Spanish. "It’s all I have." 

But one day last summer, when his parents weren't home, Amon's son answered a knock on the door. A stranger appeared and told the boy the house did not belong to his family and they would have to leave.

The threat of losing his home motivated him to contact OLA of Eastern Long Island, an advocacy group for Latinos on the East End, which connected him to legal help.

Amon and his wife, Bertha Yunga, are among at least 10 families, the majority of whom are Latino, who allege property investor Michael O’Sullivan and his company Hampton Dream Properties defrauded them by selling them homes that were in foreclosure while falsely representing the status of the properties, according to lawsuits filed in Suffolk County Supreme Court over the past decade. Some of those cases since have been settled.

"I have never seen a real estate fraud this brazen and this expansive," said Noelle Eberts, senior supervising attorney in the New York Legal Assistance Group's consumer protection unit.

In Amon's case, he alleges O'Sullivan and Hampton Dream Properties hid the status of a pending foreclosure and falsely represented that if Amon paid a down payment and made mortgage payments to the company, he would own the property free and clear of all liens, according to the lawsuit. 

"What's not legal is these bait and switches he does," said Oscar Michelen, Amon's attorney.

The families gained a new ally last month when New York State Attorney General Letitia James' office said in a recent court filing it is investigating O'Sullivan and Hampton Dream Properties for deed fraud and mortgage fraud. The filing invoked a 2023 law designed to combat deed fraud to request that state Supreme Court Justice Peter R. McGreevy pause the eviction proceeding. McGreevy is due to hear oral arguments in Suffolk County Supreme Court in Riverhead on Thursday.

The 2023 law allows the attorney general, local district attorneys or other law enforcement to halt evictions or foreclosures while an investigation is ongoing. 

"That was a game changer," said Maribel Gomez, president of the Long Island Hispanic Bar Association.

Halimah Elmariah, a spokeswoman for James, declined to comment while there is an ongoing investigation.

David Besso, an attorney representing Michael O'Sullivan, said his client "absolutely has not committed fraud."

Besso alleges the plaintiffs suing O’Sullivan simply weren’t able to finalize their purchases of the homes. He denies that O’Sullivan offered home loans to buyers who purchased homes from him. "They were supposed to get mortgages and they weren't able to get mortgages," he said.

Just a few blocks from Amon in Springs, Mauricio Ocampo and Diana Ramirez estimate they have spent almost $1 million over the past decade toward payments to O’Sullivan and extensive renovations to the home that they thought they purchased for $250,000 in 2014. They have feared they could lose their home at any moment. Both families have enlisted the help of attorney Oscar Michelen as they fight to stay in their homes. 

Ocampo and Ramirez say O’Sullivan lied, intimidated and threatened them. More recently, they say they’ve been harassed by representatives for lenders who say O’Sullivan owes them money. 

"This became the American nightmare," Ramirez said in Spanish.

Besso denied that O'Sullivan has threatened the couple beyond asking them to leave the house and noted the couple has continued to live in the house for over 10 years. 

Amon, who owns a landscaping company, says he first heard about the opportunity to buy a house five years ago from a friend from Ecuador who also had purchased from O’Sullivan.

The cost of owning the home has included an initial $300,000 down payment, more than $70,000 in mortgage payments and at least $280,000 on renovations that friends and family helped Amon complete, according to his lawsuit against O'Sullivan and Hampton Dream Properties, and Amon's estimate of renovation costs. Amon said Hampton Dream Properties initially provided a $500,000 mortgage for the home, with monthly payments of $2,529.

The terms of the loan were recorded in a handwritten contract and the sale closed in May 2021, Amon’s attorney said in court documents. Amon was not represented by an attorney in the transaction, according to the lawsuit. Buyers' attorneys typically order a title search and review the title report to ensure there aren't any claims against the property. 

"We didn't know what it was like to buy a house or anything back then, and from then on, it was really hard," Amon said earlier this month.

Amon paid more than $70,000 in mortgage payments to Hampton Dream Properties from August 2021 to February 2024, according to the lawsuit.

By that time, Amon had heard that several of O’Sullivan’s buyers were at risk of losing their homes — including his friend from Ecuador who had first told him about the opportunity, he said.

O’Sullivan had purchased Amon’s East Hampton home in 2012 from its previous owners while it was in foreclosure. He did not disclose that foreclosure when he sold the property to Amon in 2020, Amon alleged in the lawsuit. 

That foreclosure ended when U.S. Bank, the mortgage holder, took ownership of the property in November 2022. The lender held a bank auction the following year and sold the home for $1.16 million to Mastic Development Properties I LLC, an entity the state attorney general’s office alleges is also controlled by O’Sullivan. The LLC uses a P.O. Box mailing address O’Sullivan has used on other public documents.

When Amon learned how much Mastic paid to purchase the house out of foreclosure, he knew there was a problem. He wondered: Why would O’Sullivan pay more than $1 million for a house he sold to Amon for $800,000?

Then a friend who works for East Hampton Town told him — the house was not in his name.

In February 2024, he stopped making payments to O’Sullivan, and last year, Mastic Development started a proceeding to evict the family, according to the lawsuit. At one point, O’Sullivan offered Amon $500,000 to leave the house, but the two sides never finalized an agreement, according to emails shared as part of the lawsuit.

Other defendants in Amon’s lawsuit include lenders Wisdom Ventures and Webster Business Credit Corp. Neither lender responded to requests for comment on Wednesday afternoon.

The house was listed for sale last year, it’s unclear by whom, for $2.2 million, according to an online real estate listing. 

As he faced losing his house, Amon said he felt physically and emotionally sick for much of last year. Yunga, his wife, said he needed to take medication to fall asleep.

Mauricio Ocampo and Diana Ramirez, who arrived in the United States from Colombia more than 14 years ago, have endured that for nearly a decade.

"We’re sick because we’re in pain. It feels like we are going to have a heart attack or a stroke," said Ocampo, who owns a flooring company.

They bought a home from O’Sullivan in Springs for $250,000 in 2014, using a $60,000 down payment and taking out a $190,000, seller-financed mortgage with Hampton Dream Properties, according to the couple's lawsuit against O'Sullivan and the company. Ramirez found out about the house when a person came into a money transfer business Ocampo owned at the time and spotted her reading a real estate magazine, she said.

"We have houses for sale in a way that it’s easier to buy," she recalled the person told her.

At that time, Ocampo, who did not read or write in English, signed a document without an attorney that noted the purchase was subject to "all liens, mortgages and judgments" against the property, according to court documents. The document indicated Hampton Dream would secure a clean title for the property.

The couple transformed the house, investing what they estimate is nearly $1 million into it over the past decade, renovating the kitchen, the bathrooms and the roof, and building a large deck off the second floor. When they moved in, the house didn’t even have air conditioning or heating, Ocampo said.

"The joy of having a home is that it’s not just a property, it’s everything we’ve built together here," Ramirez said. "We’ve experienced so much over many years and have remained united despite so many difficult situations."

But in 2016, The Bank of New York Mellon foreclosed on the property, and sent a thick packet of documents to their house — which did not name them as owners, according to their lawsuit.

In 2022, the couple paid $190,000 that they say O’Sullivan told them was needed to clear the foreclosure — even though they had already paid a similar amount in mortgage payments over the eight years they lived in the house, according to the lawsuit.

Then, in September 2022, Ocampo alleges O'Sullivan told him he needed to sign the house over to Hampton Dream Properties so he could negotiate with the bank to resolve the foreclosure.

O’Sullivan filed a deed with the Suffolk County clerk that says Hampton Dream paid $750,000 for the home, but Ocampo said he never received any money, according to the lawsuit.

Ocampo’s lawsuit alleges O’Sullivan used those funds to end the foreclosure, take back the property and secure a $675,000 mortgage on it from Great Neck-based Wisdom Funding USA. 

Then, Hampton Dream Properties transferred the property to South Fork Realty Management Corp., a Babylon-based company, which moved to evict the family in June 2023, according to the lawsuit. 

Ocampo’s lawsuit also includes additional attorneys and lenders as defendants, including attorney William Grausso and attorney Ivan Young, who are accused of participating in a conspiracy to defraud Ocampo, according to the lawsuit.

Grausso told Newsday that Ocampo was made aware of the liens against the property at the time of the transaction. He denied that any fraud occurred as part of the sale.

"To claim fraud now, is to ignore what was agreed to and try to renegotiate the risk that he took 10 years ago," he said.

Ivan Young did not respond to requests for comment. Lenders named as defendants in the case include Wisdom Funding USA, Bankwell Bank and A&D Mortgage. The lenders did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

Michelen helped halt a potential eviction of the family in Suffolk County Supreme Court through a court order, which has remained in place since October 2023.

"The support we’ve had from OLA and [our] attorney Oscar has been like the only light we’ve had on our path," Ramirez said. "But still the hopelessness persists because there’s still no guarantee that we can get our house back. So that fear is still there of feeling like we might be evicted. It exists, but at least for now we have someone we can trust."

Minerva Perez, the executive director of OLA of Eastern Long Island, said she is the most hopeful she has been since the nonprofit began working with the Latino families two years ago now that the attorney general's office has intervened. 

"I finally believe that there are people and institutions that are taking this really egregious level of potential scam and victimization of hardworking community members seriously," she said.

Ocampo and Ramirez said they are more hopeful in their case’s outcome given the attorney general's investigation, but the experience of the past 10 years has made them wary of what’s to come.

"We are a little calmer," Ocampo said. "... but the despair has not left us."