A Minnesota real estate broker is scheduled to go on trial Monday morning for allegedly targeting Minnesota’s Somali community with predatory home sales and inflated prices.
Chadwick Banken allegedly sold 160 homes using contracts for deed, which offer few protections for consumers, according to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. The attorney general sued Banken in civil court in Hennepin County, leading to this week’s trial.
The lawsuit is the result of a joint investigation in 2022 from Sahan Journal and ProPublica that first exposed the questionable sales practice. It also identified Banken as one of Minnesota’s top seller of homes through contracts for deed from 2019 to the time the story was published in 2022…