Suit by Elderly Patients Accuses Doctor of Swindle

It was a common enough sight lately--Legal Aid attorneys holding a press conference in South-Central Los Angeles about elderly people in danger of losing their homes to yet another alleged equity scam artist.

But instead of standing in front of yet another small home whose residents were about to be evicted, the attorneys chose the South Figueroa Medical Center as the site for their news conference. The doctor who founded the center, J. Tyrone Alfred, talked three of his elderly patients into taking out mortgages against their homes and giving the money to him, the attorneys alleged.

“I don’t want to use the term ‘swindled’ lightly, but that’s what happened here,” said Steven Zrucky, a Legal Aid attorney who has filed a suit against Alfred alleging fraud, conspiracy and other violations. The plaintiffs are an elderly couple and a widow who were Alfred’s patients.

Alfred, whose clinic specializes in preventive medicine, told reporters: “I’ve done nothing wrong. I will show that.” He said later that a spate of family deaths and illnesses had prevented him from properly focusing on his business affairs during the past two years.

Zrucky, in a lawsuit filed May 29, alleged that Alfred persuaded both Viola Hawkins and Minnie and LeRoy Johnson to take out mortgages on their homes and give most of the proceeds--$53,000 in Hawkins’ case and $52,000 in the Johnsons’ case--to Alfred to buy a senior citizen residential apartment complex nearby.

“I trusted him,” said Hawkins, 75, whose husband died in February, 1990, a month before Alfred allegedly offered her what he described as a “very good deal.”

She said he offered to pay her the “points” that he ordinarily would pay a lender if she mortgaged her home and loaned him money to help buy the senior center.

Hawkins took out a mortgage on the house she and her husband had owned since 1963. Her income is $1,050 a month, she said, and payments on the mortgage are $972.

Her attorney said that Hawkins is in danger of being foreclosed upon because Alfred stopped making payments on the loan.

The Johnsons told a similar story. Johnson, 73, a retired Uniroyal Rubber inspector, said: “I just want him to give us our money back.”

Inside the worn medical office building, walls were adorned with yellowed newspaper clips--vestiges of the days when Alfred and his wife, Dr. Carolyn Cannon-Alfred, started the clinic to help establish preventive care in the area. In one clipping, Alfred was receiving a commendation from the Los Angeles City Council.

Alfred said in an interview that he and his wife had wanted to buy an apartment complex where senior citizens could live. “My wife and I dreamed of it,” he said. “Then my wife passed.”

His wife died two years ago, he said, then so did her father and several of Alfred’s in-laws. The doctor said he lost track of the mortgage payments, and his business suffered during the recession. He could not seem to put together the details, dates or whether this senior citizen complex was a nonprofit venture.

“Doing things for people is my life ,” Alfred said later.

He added that he had concluded he was apparently causing Hawkins and Johnson the sort of problems he had been trying to solve with the senior center. He pledged to make sure his patients were paid back. “The first action I am going to take is to pay off these people,” he said.

It was a promise both Hawkins and Johnson said he had made before.