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

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.

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.

The first page is titled "Letter of Intent" and contains a short paragraph stating that Alan Davis paid Bosworth "and/or" Home America $156,492 on June 6, 2006, for a deposit on the purchase of the company.

The next two pages are similar, noting two additional deposits for the sale of $100,000 and $75,000 in late June and August, respectively. All the pages are signed by Davis and Bosworth.

The documents look anything but official, and New Times asks Bosworth during his interview whether it's possible the men picked some random money transaction in 2006 between Bosworth and Davis, deciding only later to call it the sale of Home America/GoRenter.

Bosworth says "no" — the transaction listed was, indeed, for his company.

However, on the list of investors Bosworth's former employee provided, Alan Davis is shown having invested exactly $156,492 in a Scottsdale office building called "Bell 101." The employee tells New Times that the deal closed on June 6, a fact that Greg Dawson confirmed in a later interview.

The list shows Alan Davis also invested $100,000 in another office building; the former employee says that deal closed on June 20, the same day as the second supposed deposit of $100,000 for Bosworth's company.

It's a stunning coincidence.

And it raises the question of whether the sale agreement of Home America/GoRenter between Davis and Bosworth may have been backdated to well before the Magelsen verdict and subsequent bankruptcy filing.

Arizona Corporation Commission records show no official change in the ownership of GoRenter until April 2008, though the records do make it look as if, at least on paper, Bosworth no longer runs his company.

Davis didn't return repeated calls seeking comment on the investments. Dawson did, though. He claimed Davis told him that the money invested on June 6 in the office building must have been soon diverted to the sale of Bosworth's company, but he wasn't sure how that happened.

Bosworth writes cryptically in a later e-mail, "I do not believe Alan Davis or Berne Fleming has ever paid me personally on any of the businesses."

One thing is for sure: Mark Bosworth did not list any income from the sale of his company on his bankruptcy petition.

But perhaps he should have.

GoRenter.com gave New Times a copy of a fourth document, dated January 1, 2008, and titled "Transfer of Membership Interest." It states that Mark Bosworth "acknowledges receipt of $331,492 from about June through August 2006" for the alleged sale, and it's signed by Bosworth, Davis, Fleming, and Dawson.

Even if the sale was genuine, it seems impossible to fully separate GoRenter — formerly Home America, formerly Property Masters — from Mark Bosworth.

His parents work there. His brother-in-law, Alan Davis, and Davis' cousin, Fleming, are the managers.

New Times asks Dan Manley, GoRenter's broker, whether he also has family ties to Bosworth.

"I'm not related in any way," Manley says.

But, in fact, Manley is the father of Steve Manley, another GoRenter employee. And Steve Manley is married to one of Bosworth's daughters, Alisha.

Not only that, Bosworth brags to New Times that he's "being paid very well to be retired" by the "new" owners, because their purchase of the company is being paid out over time. It's as if he continues to collect a paycheck from a real estate company, yet the state has prohibited him from working in real estate.

The managers at GoRenter can try to distance themselves from their founder. But, by all appearances, the buck still stops with Mark Bosworth.