SACRAMENTO – In late May, 24-year-old porn star Kayden Kross pled "no contest" to misdemeanor charges arising out of a mortgage scam which reportedly targeted cabaret dancers with little if any financial training and large disposable incomes.
"The situation was, I basically was talked into purchasing two properties that were in foreclosure by a broker who stood to make a lot of money by brokering the transaction," Kross told AVN. "It was a super-sophisticated transaction that I knew nothing about; it fell apart; the numbers were shaky, and the broker was just setting it up to get his fee and run, so that really screwed me up. I didn't know what I was doing or supposed to be doing, and I still don't know exactly what I did wrong and exactly what was illegal about it."
"The thing that they got me on was not filling out a contract with the people I bought the property from," she continued. "The people who I bought the property from were people who, through all of this, were trying to get money out of me, and basically through the two and a half years or however long it's been, they have been in the police station every single day, annoying the hell out of police officers, trying to get them to make a case against me so they could get a settlement out of me, and they got me on the technicality that there was no written contract, and they had never actually prosecuted anyone for that in the history of Sacramento."
Kross was sentenced to one day in jail for the offense, but was given credit for "time served": The day she self-surrendered and was booked, which meant that Kross spent no time behind bars. Additionally, charges of grand theft which had previously been lodged against her were dismissed. She was also given three years of what she described as "informal probation," which she began serving almost immediately.
While Kross declined to discuss what other obligations she may have incurred pursuant to the charges, such as any payments to the occupants of the foreclosed houses which she had bought, she assured that, "Everything that I have to do has been done."
As for how Kross got into the situation in the first place, she blamed her own naivete.
"Everyone who knows me knows I'm not the type of person who will intentionally screw someone over," she said. "I just got pulled into a situation I knew nothing about. I was trying to refinance my own house, and he was the broker, and he and the mortgage lender are the two people who did this to me. Actually, I wasn't the only girl they did this to; their general MO [modus operandi] was to take girls who had cash, which are usually house girls, and – cash and a good credit score which was all they needed, so a few girls got pulled in. The did the same thing on all of us."
Kross said she didn't know how many dancers had been similarly scammed.
"I haven't been in the loop," she explained. "I've actually done my best to stay as far away from it as possible. But they pulled this scam on a number of people, and a number of people got pulled into the legal system because of this, so it's unfortunate. My advice is never give your social security number to somebody you haven't done your research on."
Kross said that Adam & Eve, to whom Kross has been under contract, had been "extremely supportive" through the whole situation, and recently renewed her contract for a second year.
