By Gary Silverman. How many of you that sit and judge me Ever walked the streets of Bakersfield? On the spring day in when he turned 41, Carl Cole left the small town in North Carolina where he had grown up as a boy and fallen into disgrace as a man. With his wife and their two sons he headed out west, to Bakersfield, California, and prayed for something better.
Many things did come together, for a time. He worked hard, learnt how to sell real estate and grew wealthy. He wore Armani and Brioni, drove a Lamborghini, a Mercedes and a Corvette, biked in the mountains, smiled at the local television audiences at home and pursued a deal to build the tallest towers in the state between San Francisco and Los Angeles β all the while watching out for signs from up above, for direction from the Good Shepherd in whom he trusted.
But Cole lost his way β again. He became one of the people who helped cause the global financial crisis β which, as unlikely as it sounds, was the kind of thing that could happen to a God-fearing man selling houses in a hot property market such as Bakersfield in the past decade.
Cole and his confederates found themselves facing the temptation of a lifetime. They could cheat people who knew less about their local property market than they did β out-of-town bankers who came to Bakersfield to buy mortgages to package into bonds, but left their brains back east, or wherever it was they came from. It was easy money for people who had known hard times, but it put Cole on the wrong side of the law. Cole is to be sentenced on February 18 for his role in a mortgage fraud case that helped turn Bakersfield into one of the home foreclosure capitals of the US.
Under federal guidelines, Cole could be sent to prison for more than 15 years. In any case, at 66, Cole faces another sad trip to another new place β prison β and the hard work of explaining to others and to himself how a country boy who got his second chance wound up making such a mess out of it.
