The city has recently offered one high-profile explanation for why Baltimore is plagued with so many vacant, rat-infested, crime-breeding, foreclosed-on houses: African-American would-be homeowners have been duped into costly loans by a bank that systematically targets black borrowers for them, even when they could qualify for conventional loans.

That’s the premise of Baltimore’s reverse-redlining lawsuit against Wells Fargo Bank.

But City Paper looked into some of the properties highlighted in the city’s lawsuit and found two that fit a completely different profile: they are owned by someone named Balvinder Singh with a New Jersey address who is possibly connected to a mortgage fraud scheme involving a politically-connected member of New York’s Sikh community.

Whatever their origins, foreclosed-on properties are clearly a drain on the city. But how much are Baltimore’s reverse-redlining allegations threatened by this other all-too-familiar Baltimore phenomenon: flipping?

n Faison was supposed to illustrate the city’s “reverse redlining” case against Wells Fargo Bank.  The suit argues that the bank has been pushing high-cost loans on African-American borrowers in certain Baltimore neighborhoods, loans they can’t afford, leading to foreclosure, vacancies and urban blight.

Now City Paper has looked into the ownership of that property and found not African-American owner occupants but a Sikh out-of-town speculator.