Minnesota sues C4D, LLC over same-day contract-for-deed resales to Somali Muslim buyers
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued C4D, LLC, Five Points Properties, LLC, and co-owners Travis Benoit and Steven Legatt in Hennepin County District Court in September 2026, alleging the pair bought homes with ordinary 30-year mortgages, resold them the same day, often within hours, at roughly double the price through contracts for deed marketed as interest-free to Somali Muslim buyers, and skipped legally required cost disclosures. The complaint says the roughly 74 known customers' contracts failed at more than 20 times the national foreclosure rate. The lawsuit was filed only weeks before this page was last reviewed and remains unresolved; none of the allegations below has been proven in court.
- Year
- 2026
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Ongoing
- Victims
- 74
- Schemes
- Contract-for-deed scams
- Last reviewed
- 2026-10-17
The facts, as recorded
- The Minnesota Attorney General's Office filed suit in September 2026 against C4D, LLC, Five Points Properties, LLC, and the companies' co-owners, Travis Benoit and Steven Legatt, alleging the conduct ran from at least 2017 through September 2025.
- The complaint alleges the defendants bought homes using conventional 30-year mortgages, then resold the same homes the same day, often within hours, to buyers under contracts for deed; one Hennepin County home was bought in February 2024 for $399,900 and resold that day for $931,950, and another was bought in September 2022 for $247,000 and resold that day for $664,000.
- The buyer in the February 2024 transaction paid a $120,000 down payment and still owed $811,050; the buyer in the September 2022 transaction paid nearly $98,000 down and owed roughly $567,000, according to the complaint.
- The complaint alleges the sales were marketed as interest-free to attract Somali Muslim buyers, with the company's website defaulting to the Somali language and featuring testimonials, and that the contracts in fact carried undisclosed interest, fees and large annual or end-of-contract balloon payments, in one instance a $2,000 monthly payment paired with a roughly $77,000 balloon due every year.
- The lawsuit alleges roughly 74 known C4D customers, that more than two-thirds of them applied for COVID-era HomeHelpMN rental and mortgage assistance, a rate the state says was five times higher than customers of any other contract-for-deed company in Minnesota, and that C4D's own data shows its contracts failed at more than 20 times the national foreclosure rate.
- The complaint alleges violations of Minnesota's pre-2024 and post-2024 contract-for-deed disclosure statutes, the state Human Rights Act, and the federal Truth in Lending Act, including a claim that the defendants never verified buyers' ability to repay and skipped required independent counseling on about one-fifth of contracts.
- The complaint describes marketing videos from a local imam and a Somali singer crediting C4D's financing model with helping the community buy the Islamic Center in St. Cloud and a local charter school, and alleges the company hired an early customer, later featured as a marketing success story, to recruit other buyers and collect late payments, after his own home had been repossessed.
- The complaint alleges that in August 2023, an attorney for two Somali buyers warned C4D in writing that it was skipping required disclosures and targeting buyers by religion and national origin; C4D settled with those two buyers but, the state alleges, did not change its practices. Attorney General Ellison said the defendants sought 'to exploit someone's deeply held religious belief in order to impoverish them,' and that his office has 'charged and won cases like this before.'
Why this case matters
Every other documented case on this page describes a buyer losing money over years of payments. This complaint alleges something faster and, if proven, more mechanical: a company buying a home with an ordinary mortgage in the morning and reselling the same house, on paper, for roughly double by the afternoon, to a buyer locked into a contract for deed instead of the mortgage the seller itself had just used.
The same-day markup
The two transactions detailed in the complaint, a $399,900 purchase resold the same day for $931,950, and a $247,000 purchase resold the same day for $664,000, are the most direct documented illustration on this page of how a contract-for-deed price is set: not by comparable sales or an appraisal the buyer can see, but by whatever the seller decides to charge for financing it is simultaneously alleged to have withheld real disclosure about.
Who the complaint says was targeted
The state alleges the company’s marketing, a Somali-language website by default, testimonials from Somali customers, videos from a local imam and a Somali singer crediting the company’s financing with helping the community buy a mosque and a charter school, was built around the same community whose religious objection to interest the complaint says the company exploited by calling its contracts interest-free.
The caveat
This lawsuit was filed in September 2026 and remained unresolved at the time this page was last reviewed. Every figure and allegation above, the same-day resale prices, the marketing claims, the foreclosure rate, the August 2023 warning letter, is the Attorney General’s allegation in a civil complaint, not a court’s finding. Travis Benoit, Steven Legatt, C4D, LLC and Five Points Properties, LLC have not been found liable for any of this conduct and are presumed to have a defense they have not yet had the opportunity to present in court; neither defendant could be reached for comment in the press accounts reviewed for this page.
Sources
- Attorney General Ellison sues C4D over predatory and illegal contracts for deed. KNSI Radio. Accessed 2026-10-17. Supports: The defendants' names, the 2017 to September 2025 conduct period, the same-day resale allegations and dollar figures, the 74 known customers and HomeHelpMN application rate, the 20-times foreclosure-rate claim, the disclosure-law violations alleged, the marketing and community-liaison allegations, and the August 2023 warning letter.
- Minnesota attorney general sues real estate investors over contract-for-deed scheme targeting Somali Muslim buyers. Sahan Journal. Accessed 2026-10-17. Supports: Independent confirmation of the Benoit and Legatt lawsuit, the C4D and Five Properties, LLC company names, the February 2024 and September 2022 transaction figures, the balloon-payment structure, the roughly 20-times-national foreclosure-rate allegation, and the Ellison quotes.