Defunct Aurora solar firm leaves a Brighton family “stuck in this abyss”

On a scorching Saturday afternoon, Josefina Lemus sat in her duplex in Brighton and tried to seek out the phrases to explain the heartache and frustration of those previous two years.

“No sé qué decir,” Lemus, 61, stated ultimately, shaking her head and wiping away tears.

“She says, ‘I don’t know what to say,’” her daughter, AnaRosa Stroh, translated. Then, talking for herself, Stroh stated, “It has affected all of us, and impacts all of us daily.”

Two years in the past, whereas sitting in that very same lounge subsequent to her husband, Lemus noticed an advert on Spanish-language TV for Blue Sky Photo voltaic, an Aurora firm. It promised power effectivity, tax breaks and decrease payments. Her husband, Francisco, referred to as the quantity on the display screen.

When Blue Sky’s salespeople arrived on the couple’s duplex, there was an issue: Their mounted earnings didn’t justify a $48,000 mortgage to fund the photo voltaic panels. Francisco requested his daughter to co-sign however Stroh refused, irritating her father, who had gentle dementia, she stated.

However in some way, the 25-year mortgage was signed anyway and set up started. Stroh, her mom and their lawyer imagine that Francisco’s signature was solid, noting that it doesn’t appear to be his different signatures and was signed digitally, one thing they are saying that he didn’t know how one can do. And, at age 79, he wouldn’t have signed a mortgage that will outlive him, they are saying.

“My dad was not a man to have debt,” in keeping with Stroh, the daughter. “He had a bank card however he paid it off on the finish of each month. In any other case he paid money for every part.”

The mortgage got here from a California firm referred to as GoodLeap, which lends cash for residence photo voltaic tasks. Final 12 months, GoodLeap paid a $65,000 superb to settle allegations by the lawyer normal of Minnesota that it had deceived debtors with false guarantees and hidden prices.

Francisco Lemus died unexpectedly at 80 in October 2022, 4 months after supposedly signing the mortgage paperwork. Seven months after that, the proprietor of Blue Sky additionally died and that firm closed up store. Its challenge on the Lemus residence was by no means completed.

Nonetheless, the gathering calls didn’t cease. Francisco’s cellphone rang and rang, his daughter says, even after GoodLeap was advised he had died. His spouse makes funds on the mortgage, a number of hundred {dollars} every month, however can’t pay it off. The photo voltaic panels nonetheless don’t work.

“She has been making funds since 2022 and has nothing to indicate for it,” Stroh stated.

Lemus and Stroh want to transfer to Arizona, removed from the house the place their husband and father lived and the place he suffered the autumn that killed him. However GoodLeap’s mortgage, which partly encumbers the duplex, has clouded its title and made promoting unattainable, they are saying.

“That is the home they lived in collectively since 1997,” Stroh stated of her mother and father. “This home brings again recollections of him, it reminds her of him. She’s prepared for one more chapter.”

“That’s what’s so unhappy about this,” stated Anita Springsteen, an lawyer for the mom and daughter. “Folks get caught on this abyss and there’s no manner out of it.”

On the primary day of June, Springsteen filed a lawsuit in opposition to GoodLeap and Blue Sky Photo voltaic on behalf of her shoppers. She needs the GoodLeap mortgage, which she considers to be fraudulent, forgiven, the photo voltaic panels taken away, and injury to the duplex’s roof repaired.

“I hope justice prevails,” she stated. “If we are able to get to a jury, a jury will aspect with this household.”

There’s purpose to doubt the household’s claims in opposition to Blue Sky will succeed. Final 12 months, a person in unincorporated Boulder County sued the photo voltaic firm for failing to complete a challenge after he paid $51,000. Blue Sky, which was defunct by then, ignored that case and the person dropped his lawsuit, believing it was a waste of time. (GoodLeap wasn’t a defendant.)