John Verra Jr. knew there were troubles in his neighborhood built by Beazer Homes. Houses on his northeast Charlotte street had foreclosed. Neighbors moved out quietly at night.

But he never suspected anything might be wrong with his own home purchase until a few weeks ago. That's when friends heard on the news that some Beazer buyers were entitled to money from a $50 million settlement fund - and the Charlotte School of Law was holding free clinics to help.

"We pulled our paperwork and went to the meeting," Verra said.

At the law school's Oct. 27 workshop, he learned he probably qualifies for at least $2,000 from the Beazer settlement fund.

"We mailed off the paperwork and we're waiting to see what happens," Verra said. "It's like a gift."

The settlement was the result of a 2007 Observer series that found Beazer arranged larger loans than some customers could afford and violated federal lending rules. The series also found that Beazer's aggressive sales tactics contributed to an unusually high foreclosure rate in many of its Charlotte-area starter-home developments.

Since April, Charlotte School of Law students and faculty, working without pay, have helped fill out more than $2.57 million in restitution fund claims for 416 households, according to Sean Lew, assistant professor of pro bono. Families have called to report restitution checks of up to $12,000.

The law school is holding another free workshop at the school from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday.

The U.S. Attorney's office in Charlotte in 2009 charged Beazer Homes with mortgage fraud and accounting fraud. One of the allegations was that Beazer employees offered down-payment "gifts" to homebuyers and then fraudulently inflated home prices to offset the cost. Another allegation was that Beazer charged homebuyers for "discount points" paid to the lender to get a lower interest rate. But Beazer kept part or all of the money, court documents said, and in some cases raised the home price to offset the amount.

In its deferred prosecution agreement with prosecutors in summer 2009, Beazer accepted responsibility for fraudulent practices and agreed to pay $10million in immediate restitution for victims, plus up to $50 million total.

Helping Beazer homeowners has become one of the largest pro bono projects by the Charlotte School of Law, Lew said. The school didn't know what to expect at the first workshop last spring. More than 200 families showed up. After the second spring session, people called the school throughout the summer asking for more help, he said.

The school trains law students to look for entries on owners' HUD-1 homebuyer forms that indicate they got charitable "gifts" or purchased "discount points." At the Oct. 27 clinic, students helped 22 families file claims; a few didn't appear to have legitimate claims. Some didn't bring needed paperwork and had to schedule follow-up sessions.

Lew said the school plans to continue helping with claim forms until the 2014 deadline.

How many Beazer homeowners may be eligible for settlement money in the Charlotte area? "I don't know," Lew said. "It seems like thousands."

Charlotte School of Law is expanding its efforts beyond helping with the paperwork. The school is looking for translators to help more Spanish-speaking homeowners and tracking the amount of claim money paid to homeowners. Lew also hopes to get a sense of how many Beazer homeowners have been foreclosed.

Beazer Homes USA was one of the largest starter-home builders in the Charlotte area before it pulled out of this market in 2008. Many of the builder's homeowners found they couldn't afford the houses they bought; their foreclosures lowered home prices so that whole neighborhoods suffered.

This summer, the government's top housing investigator criticized the company's deferred prosecution settlement, saying federal prosecutors in Charlotte shut him out of their investigation of Beazer Homes USA and shortchanged taxpayers in their settlement with the homebuilder.

Kenneth Donohue, the retiring inspector general for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, also expressed concern that the U.S. attorney's office "seemingly" relied on an internal investigation by the law firm Alston & Bird, which was hired by Beazer at a cost of $35 million to $50million. This expenditure "greatly reduced" the money that Beazer had available to pay HUD, the Federal Housing Administration and U.S. taxpayers "for the fraud committed against them," Donohue wrote.

A Justice Department official responded that the agency regretted "any discord" in the Beazer settlement negotiations. Settlements require a balancing of criminal, civil and administrative remedies, Marshall Jarrett wrote in his letter. "Reasonable minds often differ as to which remedies are appropriate."

Verra's street, Olde Justin Place in the Derita area, has seen about one in four homes foreclose since it was built in 2001, according to Mecklenburg real estate records. Even though Verra bought his house in 2002 and doesn't expect to try to sell for at least a couple of years, he doesn't expect to make money over the $114,500 purchase price.

"I think we'll break even or take a loss," he said.

But he's grateful to the Charlotte School of Law for its help. If his family gets a settlement check from the Beazer fund, law school students "helped us get that gift. They were excellent."