KEY POINTS:
Gwendoline Harrison is not feeling too good. Everything is a right mess, the old lady says.
"I'm 90 and I'm not looking forward to anything."
I ask: what might happen to you?
"I've got no idea," she replies. "I'll go to jail if they want me to. Well, they might put me there. I can't pay anything so they can put me in jail."
Mrs Harrison, a pensioner from Tauranga, is a Blue Chip investor. Despite advice from the liquidator at an investors' meeting in Auckland last week - packed full of people fearing they will lose their homes - to hold tight while the complicated money trail is investigated, Mrs Harrison has received a letter from a mortgage company which has left her reeling.
Challenger Mortgage Management Limited, with an address in Melbourne, wrote that her mortgage payments were in arrears.
She owes $2565.90 a month on the mortgage she took out to go into Blue Chip but says she has no way of paying the money unless she sells her home of 60 years.
The letter says the status of her account is now outside the terms and conditions of her mortgage. If the debt isn't paid in full in five days, the mortgage company threatens legal action.
And if there is legal action, all costs involved would be payable by Mrs Harrison, says the letter.
Please treat the matter as urgent, the letter said, with the word urgent spelled out in capitals.
It's scary stuff for a 90-year-old. Mrs Harrison and her late husband Ken, a beekeeper, built the house she loves and where they raised their children.
It's not a flash house but it means "everything" to Mrs Harrison. "It's my home. My life. All my children have been born here."
She still gardens at 90 and has a mobility scooter to help her get around.
Her house is jam-packed with the trinkets, clutter and memories of 60 years of life and the backyard contains the fruit trees she has planted over the years.
Her daughter, Margaret Aagaard-Rasmussen, is 68. She is also a Blue Chip investor who stands to lose her own home next door. She says her mum is getting a little forgetful but is still agile and roars up and down the driveway on her scooter.
Mrs Harrison says she had hoped to die in her house. The letter had come as a nasty shock because she had thought everything was going well.
It's very hard, Mrs Harrison says. She has difficulty sleeping and has nightmares.
"You don't realise what a world we're living in."
She says she will stay in her house until they come and drag her out. The mother and daughter laugh about barricading themselves in, though you get the feeling they're not joking.
The 3000 victims of property group Blue Chip, who are collectively owed $70 million or more, are of all ages, but many are middle-aged and some, like Mrs Harrison, are very elderly.
Mrs Harrison's daughter says her mother is a classic case of an elderly lady being preyed upon. She was in trouble about eight years ago when she was befriended by a house painter who told her a hard luck story and talked her into lending him money. She lost a lot and ended up having to take out a $50,000 mortgage on her freehold home, but was struggling to pay that on her pension.
Enter Lynda Rewita, the sister of Blue Chip founder Mark Bryers. Rewita and her husband ran the Blue Chip office in Tauranga and Mrs Aagaard-Rasmussen says Rewita came to Mrs Harrison's home "and said, look, we can get rid of that mortgage for you if you come into Blue Chip".
Mrs Aagaard-Rasmussen says her mother was told that in four years the mortgage would be gone and she would have some money.
"Now, she's got nearly $500,000 owing on the house."
Weekend Review contacted Lynda Rewita, who would not comment, directing us to a Blue Chip media enquiries email address via their website. The email does not work and a telephone number is not answered.
Rewita hung up as she was asked if she felt bad about Mrs Harrison's situation.
Mrs Aagaard-Rasmussen says she too faces ruin. She says she became a Blue Chip investor back in 2003 when the company went by another name.
Her husband had recently died and she had bought a house in Otara through the finance company scheme, but says she was told she could get out any time she wanted and the company would buy the Otara house back.
When she decided to get out, she says the company refused to buy the house back, eventually agreeing to do so only if she re-entered the programme.
"So I had to go back into it and this time it was an apartment, it was a joint venture thing and the place I'm supposed to have an apartment, there's nothing there. It's just an empty section, there's a parking lot on it, in Anzac Avenue [Auckland].
"So now we are left with a mortgage and we can't pay - almost $200,000 - so we're gradually going bankrupt."
A good friend had introduced her to Blue Chip, she says. He's in dire straits now too.
At the investors' meeting in Auckland on Wednesday was an elderly gent wearing a grey hat and a pale yellow shirt.
He was in his 80s, as was his wife. While he talked, his wife turned away. She can't handle talking about what life has become.
A living nightmare pretty much sums it up. This pensioner couple is also from Tauranga. The husband won't tell reveal his name and won't say how much of their money has disappeared. But they might have to sell their little unit, he says.
Why did they do it? To leave a legacy for their children, he says.
They have been married for 53 years. "Time runs out, you know. I don't know how long we've got together but we thought, let's think in terms of giving the kids something to fall back on."
It backfired. The children are marvellous people, the old man says, who will look after them.
"There's still that factor though. You don't want to be dependent on your children. You can't be dependent on your children, that's not the way a rational-thinking parent would think."
The elderly man says he looks back on his life and thinks how people have changed. This is not the New Zealand he grew up in.
"If I was not a Christian I'd become very bitter I think."
A hard-working mechanic all his life, he has never been wealthy, just unwise in making this investment.
"At the time we did check. We thought we were pretty secure and it was a friend, a very close friend, who got us into it."
There are so many stories of people who thought they were doing the right thing in taking care of their retirement years but are now facing the prospect of starting over with nothing.
Another couple at the meeting live in South Auckland. They are in their 60s and have one of the highest debts of the Blue Chip investors.
At the meeting on Wednesday they were sounding strong and were happy to be named in a story and to be photographed the next day. Their story would be for the greater good, a warning to others.
On Thursday they called. Please, can we cancel the photo shoot, they asked. And use our story but please, don't use our names.
Overnight, the nightmare had flared and life seemed even bleaker in the morning sun.
On the phone, the husband is a different man. He is fragile and sounds as if he can't take much more.
"We don't particularly want it dragged up and down the country. We've got enough to contend with. Everyone I bump into is going to talk about it and I don't know if I can handle all that at the moment.
"I hope you can understand. It's been rather a traumatic experience. We don't want to make it any worse for ourselves or any harder. The whole family's pretty frayed, actually."
Before Blue Chip this couple had a $40,000 mortgage. Now they owe more than $1 million. They must find $10,000 a month to service the interest.
Their nightmare began with a cold call inviting them to a seminar. They had been thinking about what to do to create an income in requirement, so they went along.
Then they had a visit from a Blue Chip representative. He seemed like a nice guy - in fact they still like him and say he was probably suckered in too, getting his own parents into it.
But they didn't rush in. They spent three months thinking about investing before they did.
In their situation - they own a modest house and a modest bach but don't have much money coming in - the idea of using their collateral to produce an income seemed a good one.
They bought two apartments and say they were guaranteed rent regardless of whether the apartments were leased or not. Everything went well for more than a year but then the money dried up.
"We are going to have to start over," says the husband. Instead of retiring to their bach, the holiday home they bought years ago is on the market. They fear the house will be next.
Their apartments are not worth what they were valued for, and if sold won't fetch enough to get them out of the mess.
They have what they call a "rescue plan" which they might have to put into action.
"If we sold the bach, reduced the mortgage, rented out the house ... we were wondering if we might get a job managing a motel which would give us accommodation and we would meet the payments that way."
Instead of thoughts of retiring, the couple are thinking about jobs as they look to their 70s.
Suzanne Edmonds, spokeswoman for the lobby group EUFA (Exposing Unacceptable Financial Activities), says these stories are just a few of the hundreds of Blue Chip investors facing similar situations.
To the people who say they were greedy, or naive, or stupid to remortgage their homes and get involved, she responds: "There'll be nobody in Blue Chip that's come to us that hasn't been conned, that hasn't been pressured and browbeaten and had people just absolutely targeting them and sweet, sweet sales talk."
Edmonds says she is aware of many people like Mrs Harrison who are getting threatening letters.
"The people that aren't getting demands are the people that are still paying into this black hole."
Mrs Harrison, who can't pay, won't go to jail, says Edmonds.
But if the mortgage company continues down a path of legal action she could be evicted.
"I'm saying over my dead body will a 90-year-old woman be evicted from her home."
