The ultimate victim of a real estate Ponzi scheme mastermind, who allegedly defrauded millions of dollars from his clients, could turn out to be his own wife of 38 years. The lesson for homeowners is clear: Be careful who you're dealing with, even if it's your spouse.

David Colwell, a 57-year-old insurance salesman from Hamilton, Ohio, died in 2008 from what police believe was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He killed himself right before federal prosecutors were about to charge him with a $9 million real estate fraud scheme that left some victims penniless.

Now the feds are going after his 59-year-old widow, Pam Colwell. Although she is not being charged with any crime, prosecutors want to seize her property and life insurance policies, valued at $2.5 million. Colwell is challenging the attempted seizure; and her lawyer denies that she had any knowledge of her husband's misdeeds.

Now prosecutors want to make at least partial restitution to the scheme's 90 victims. The government is legally entitled to the property under federal forfeiture laws, if they can link Pam Colwell's property and insurance to criminal activity.

"She didn't have anything to do with this," said her lawyer, Jack Grove. "Her life has unraveled."

Interested in buying the "Love Street" Laurel Canyon home where rock legend Jim Morrison spent some of his strangest days? The three-bedroom house where the Doors front man and his girlfriend Pamela Courson lived together in the late 1960s is on the market for $1.199 million -- pricey when you consider the 2,300-square-foot abode sold for $535,000 in 2001.

Once a rundown Los Angeles apartment building and now a refurbished single-family bungalow; the house at 8021 Rothdell Trail, was the inspiration for the Morrison song "Love Street."

For music fans and especially Doors aficionados with some cash to spend, the home is a rock 'n' roll fantasia. During the late 1960s, the bungalow was like a boarding house for rock musicians on the verge of stardom and other counterculture types.

Morrison and Courson lived on the top floor of what music journalist Stephen Davis describes to HousingWatch, as a "notorious hippie haven."

A producer of a low-budget 2009 Hollywood slasher film has been indicted for masterminding a real estate swindle that reaped millions of dollars from shady condominium purchases in California.

James D. McConville was aspiring to be the movie industry's next Wes Craven, but instead is starring in his own horror extravaganza that might be aptly titled Invasion of the Mortgage Fraudsters.

McConville and five co-conspirators have been federally charged with conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering, involving hundreds of condominium purchases in Southern and Northern California. Many of those condominiums are now in default. Like the maniac in his film "Red Velvet," McConville and his cronies allegedly stabbed their victims in the back --metaphorically speaking, of course --when they least expected it.

And like a fright film's elusive villain, McConville has yet to be apprehended, according to indictment from the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California.

At the same time, McConville and his cohorts conflated the condo purchase prices and siphoned off the extra money to his own family and corporate entities. He would agree to get a mortgage loan in a straw buyer's name for a much higher price than he would actually pay a for a property.

He reportedly made more than $12.5 million on the 81 condos he arranged to purchase in San Diego County.

To assist him in his dirty dealings, McConville partnered with an escrow officer, notary public, banker, and others who forged documents, faked wire transfers, and stole money that was funneled into dummy corporations.

Perhaps most frightening: He was able to make fraudulent deals under the noses of lenders, developers and mortgage brokers, who didn't examine the transactions closely enough.

The victims, who agreed to pose as buyers for McConville, thought they'd be making a quick $10,000 for each purchase and that ownership would be quickly transferred out of their names. Instead they were left holding the bag on dozens of defaulted properties when McConville stopped making monthly mortgage payments. Many have had their credit completely ruined and most didn't even receive the money that that they were initially promised.

"Many of us who were actually fooled by this man and are happy and relieved that he has been indicted," Vicki Jenkins, one of McConville's straw buyers, told The San Diego Union Tribune. "I'm just hoping this prevents other people from making the same mistakes we made."

Private lenders who loaned money to McConville apparently lost millions of dollars.

While McConville made millions from his real estate deals, his low-budget horror movie didn't do nearly as well. Red Velvet played at several horror film festivals but couldn't find a distributor. The film stars Kelli Garner and Henry Thomas, best known for his role as Elliot in Steven Spielberg's "E.T."

James McConville, phone home. The FBI is waiting for you.