Attorney General Ellison sues C4D over predatory and illegal contracts for deed

Alleges company and owners specifically target Muslims of Somali descent for ‘reverse redlining’

Abusive and deceptive contracts for deed combine high hidden finance charges with short contract terms to ensure people lose their homes while defendants illegally profit

September 9, 2026 (SAINT PAUL) — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison today filed a lawsuit against C4D, LLC (“C4D”), its owners Travis Benoit and Steven Legatt, and a related entity called Five Points Properties, LLC, alleging that they violated multiple state and federal laws by selling houses via predatory and illegal contracts for deed; used deceptive trade practices to market their contracts for deed; and discriminated against Somali-American Muslims by leveraging their religious beliefs to target them with particularly abusive and deceptive contracts for deed — a form of reverse redlining.

“To exploit someone’s deeply held religious belief in order to impoverish them and leave them without a home while illegally enriching yourself is a special kind of low,” Attorney General Ellison said. “A home is the biggest and most significant purchase most of us will ever make, which is why so many state and federal laws on the books protect home buyers and make sure these transactions are entirely above board. We have other important laws to protect people from being discriminated against in commercial transactions on the basis of religion, race, sex, gender, and many other properly protected categories. I intend to prove in court that the fraudsters I’ve charged today have brazenly broken these laws of ours over and over. My office and I have charged and won cases like this before and we intend to do so again.”

In the lawsuit filed in Hennepin County, Attorney General Ellison accuses the C4D defendants of misrepresenting the terms of their contracts for deed and failing to disclose key terms of the transaction. The terms that they offer are egregiously unfair — including exorbitant costs, undisclosed fees, deceptive contracting practices, and other abusive terms that mean that most customers are immediately underwater on their agreements. These practices make it difficult, if not impossible, for many customers to keep up with their home payments. Customers that cannot afford to pay the extortionate costs are forced to walk away from their homes with no equity, allowing the C4D defendants both to line their pockets and to resell the same home to new prospective purchasers on the same unfair terms. Hence, the C4D defendants’ promise of interest-free transactions is hollow.

The C4D defendants’ targeting of a deceptive, harmful, and predatory housing scheme on the basis of national origin and religion constitutes “reverse redlining.” In contrast to “redlining,” which is the practice of denying high-quality credit products to a community because of the racial, ethnic, or religious composition of the area or applicant pool, reverse redlining involves the targeting of a community for the marketing of deceptive, predatory, or otherwise deleterious lending practices because of its racial, ethnic, or religious composition.

C4D’s scheme

A contract for deed, where the buyer pays the seller over a period of time rather than all at once, is sometimes known as a “poor man’s mortgage” that combines all the responsibilities of homeownership with all the disadvantages of renting, while offering the benefits of neither. Contracts for deed, sometimes called land contracts, are not unlawful in and of themselves and can be useful for some land purchases. Attorney General Ellison alleges, however, that the C4D defendants use the contracts for deed in illegal and exploitative ways.

The C4D defendants’ scheme begins by requiring that purchasers make very large down payments for homes with dramatically inflated prices, meaning that, on day one, most purchasers are immediately underwater and unable to refinance out of these loans (even if their religious beliefs do not prohibit them from obtaining a mortgage). Their next step is to require very large balloon payments annually and/or at the end of the very short term of the loan to ensure that purchasers are unlikely to pay off the contract. If the purchaser misses a single payment for the duration of the loan, including the large balloon payment, the C4D defendants can and do cancel the contract, making the purchaser walk away from the home and lose every dollar they previously paid towards the home.

Examples of how C4D’s scheme works

In February 2024, the C4D defendants purchased a property in Hennepin County for $399,900. On the same day, they resold that property to a purchaser on a contract for deed for $931,950. The purchaser in that transaction paid a down payment of $120,000, approximately 30% of the sales price the C4D defendants paid for the home. Although the balance between the down payment and the defendants’ purchase price was only $279,900, the purchaser owed the C4D defendants a whopping $811,050 — more than double the total price the defendants paid to purchase the home. In other words, on the day the purchaser purchased the home, they owed the C4D defendants multiple times what the home was worth. This created negative equity in the home and meant the buyer was underwater on the loan.

In September 2022, the C4D defendants purchased a home in Hennepin County for $247,000. On the same day, they resold the home via contract for deed for $664,000. In this transaction, the purchaser paid a down payment of $97,780, almost 40% of the price the C4D defendants actually paid for the home. After this large down payment, the purchaser still owed the C4D defendants $567,000 on a home the defendants purchased for less than half that amount. Like the purchaser in the first transaction, this purchaser was immediately underwater on the loan.

In both cases, individual defendants Travis Benoit and Steven Legatt signed the mortgage agreement for C4D’s original purchase of the home, then entered into the contract for deed on behalf of C4D.

Rather than lowering the inflated home prices, the C4D defendants instead artificially lower the monthly payments. These deflated monthly payments make the contracts for deed seem more affordable than they truly are. The true cost, however, catches up with the purchaser at the end of the first contract year, in the form of an annual balloon payment. These annual balloon payments are far from trivial. For example, one customer who entered into a contract for deed with the C4D defendants in December 2020 had a $2,000 monthly payment but owed a balloon payment of $77,475 every year.

The natural consequence of these two elements — the high finance charges and the short contract terms — is that the C4D defendants’ contracts fail at an extraordinary rate. The C4D defendants’ own data shows that its contracts fail at a rate more than 20 times the national foreclosure rate.

Another C4D customer, a Somali speaker who does not speak English fluently, signed her contract for deed relying on representations from the C4D defendants that the agreement she signed was a mortgage and with the understanding that she would benefit from the foreclosure protections normally afforded to home buyers purchasing homes with mortgages. She also understood that the only payments she owed pursuant to the contract for deed were her monthly payments.

Instead, she entered into a contract for deed that the C4D defendants could terminate just 60 days after a missed payment, that contained no foreclosure protections at all, and in addition to her monthly payments, charged an annual balloon payment of more than $20,000 per year. When she was unable to keep up with her payments, the defendants evicted her and her children.

After cancelling contracts, the C4D defendants can then resell the property to other customers, at a significant profit. In one case, the defendants sold a property to a customer for $242,000 under a contract for deed in 2017. After the contract was cancelled, they retained ownership of the property. The C4D defendants then resold that home in 2022 to other customers for a contract price of $512,000, more than doubling the price of the home in less than five years.

Allegations and relief sought

In the lawsuit, Attorney General Ellison alleges 18 counts of violating the Minnesota Human Rights Act; the federal Truth in Lending Act, Equal Credit Opportunity Act, and Consumer Financial Protection Act; Minnesota state laws against consumer fraud and deception trade practices; and Minnesota contract for deed requirements. Attorney General Ellison alleges that for at least three years, the C4D defendants, including Mr. Benoit and Mr. Legatt, have known or should have known that they were engaged in reverse redlining and other violations of state and federal law.

Attorney General Elison asks the court to stop the C4D defendants from continuing their unlawful practices, impose civil penalties on the defendants, and to cancel or reform existing contracts when necessary to remedy injuries consumers have or will suffer.

Attorney General Ellison encourages anyone affected by these practices to submit a report using the form on the Attorney General’s website. The Office can also be reached by phone at (651) 296-3353 (Metro area), (800) 657-3787 (Greater Minnesota), or (800) 627-3529 (Minnesota Relay).

More information about contracts for deed and the pitfalls of them can be found here.