Six years later, Jones was a widower and in a financial hole. But he had one major asset, his home, and the appraisal ordered by a Bucks County mortgage broker said it was worth more than twice what Jones had paid for it.
If you're not Rip Van Winkle, you can likely write the next sentence yourself: Jones got a loan using some of that airy equity, paid off his debts, and then got caught as the housing bubble burst and the economy and job market collapsed.
Jones now faces foreclosure - court papers say he owes $227,000 on a $187,000 loan.
Gaier doesn't question that Jones fell far behind. But as he delved into the case to decide whether to mount a defense, he says, it was clear that something else wasn't right.
Hundreds of lawyers around the country are probably doing similar work. Right now, a few are known for delaying tens of thousands of foreclosures because of their discovery of the role of "robo signers" - low-level employees who pushed forward thousands of key foreclosure documents without actually reviewing them.
But Gaier isn't trying to simply delay Jones' foreclosure, even though he shares the belief that no homeowner should face eviction unless crucial documents - such as those showing the chain of title to a home or mortgage - are in order.
Instead, he's looking at something more willful than sloppy: a grand scheme that he believes played out during the middle of the last decade and basically put a bull's-eye on unwitting homeowners such as Mark Jones.
Several threads connect the cases that Gaier has assembled with the help of his law partner, Michael Shaffer, an associate, and four paralegals in their Center City office.
One is what Gaier calls a bait-and-switch pattern in loan applications that changed repeatedly before closing.
