Like the housing industry, real estate “guru” Mark Bosworth is in crash mode

Bosworth issues a lot of blanket denials:

• He knew nothing about Russell's alleged burglaries and knew nothing of any maintenance fraud or other misdealings at Home America or at his other companies.

• When he was busted by speed-enforcement cameras for driving 110 miles per hour on Loop 101, his brother had "possibly" been driving at the time.

• The changing market is responsible for any losses incurred by his investors.

• His creditors won't be out even one dime — even if he loses the appeal of the Magelsen verdict — because he'll pay back 100 percent of what he owes, even if it takes years.

Bosworth says he has many satisfied customers, and provides a list of some of them to New Times.

But when two people on the list are contacted, the endorsements are short of glowing.

James Telaroli, a former business partner of Bosworth's, says he managed to make "a few hundred thousand" dollars on about 15 rental homes he had purchased through Bosworth's companies.

But that was only because he was one of the few investors savvy enough to sell the properties in 2005 and 2006, at the height of the real estate boom.

Salvador Deluna says he had just gone through a "terrible divorce and had terrible credit" when he moved to Arizona from California in 2001 and found Bosworth through an ad.

"Over a handshake and showing him my pay stub, he handed me a house," says Deluna, who owns a small advertising firm in Litchfield Park.

It's an inspiring tale — until Deluna is probed for more details. He says Bosworth handled a "no-qualifying lease-purchase" agreement for him, which gave him some tax benefits on the sale. The down payment was actually $5,000, plus a pickup truck that was worth about $5,000. He doesn't recall the monthly rent he paid but says it was relatively low.

Deluna did not purchase the house but sold his interest in the home a year later to a friend, who took over the payments. His friend paid him $2,000, he says.

When asked if that means he lost $3,000 and a pickup truck on the deal, Deluna claims New Times is trying to spin the story negatively.

"I didn't lose any money," Deluna repeats a couple of times. But when confronted with the math, he says that — no matter what anybody may be saying about Mark Bosworth — he feels the purchase did him a world of good.

It showed creditors he could make payments, he says, and that enabled him to buy a larger home the following year.

"My experience with [Mark Bosworth] has been very positive, and I've never had any problems with him," Deluna says.

Bosworth is frustrated with the media attention he received after the Magelsen verdict. He says stories about his situation have been sensational and inaccurate.

But he certainly hasn't gotten a raw deal from the Arizona Republic, where he spent about a million dollars annually on advertising during recent years, his former employees say. GoRenter.com places large color ads in the Republic's real estate classified section each Sunday, as well as other ads.

The state's largest newspaper has written only one small article about him in recent months — that he was banned from the real estate industry in Arizona because of the Magelsen verdict.

In an interview at GoRenter.com's offices, company officials appear more nervous than Mark Bosworth did during his later interview. Berne Fleming wears a doleful expression and puts his head on a conference table a couple of times during questioning by New Times.

Bosworth isn't here, but Fleming and Go­Renter managers Dan Manley and Greg Dawson agree to comment for this article.

The men admit they're worried about a potentially negative news story on the company. They say they've lost clients with each small story the media has reported in the past few months. And they have a certain spin they want to impart:

Mark Bosworth no longer has anything to do with GoRenter.com!

Asked if they think Bosworth is unscrupulous, they hesitate. Clearly, Bosworth has been accused of many bad things, and Manley acknowledges, "We're not happy with any of it."

The GoRenter guys say Bosworth decided in mid-2006 to retire, something Bosworth also claimed during his interview at New Times' offices. So, Berne Fleming says, Bosworth sold the company (when it was called Home America) to him and Alan Davis; the takeover date was in January.

Bosworth was retained until early April, but only to help transition the company to the new owners, Fleming says.

Now that he's gone, the GoRenter managers say, they've sent a short report to the state real estate department showing that he wasn't doing anything with the company that could violate the April cease-and-desist order.

Former employees appear incredulous that anyone could believe this.

They say Bosworth is still the brains of Go­Renter — and that the idea of a sale was invented only after the Magelsen verdict came down in November. Bosworth is trying to protect his assets by making it look like a clean sale, the employees say.

To prove this isn't true, the GoRenter bosses give New Times three pages of paperwork, which they say they also submitted to the Department of Real Estate, that show details of the sale.