INDIANAPOLIS -- Documents show an Indianapolis company used a charity to get loans and to get taxpayer-supported rent assistance totaling $472,624, Call 6 for Help's Rafael Sanchez reported Wednesday.

Call 6 has learned that an Indianapolis business known as Millennium Innovations created a charity called American Gift Foundation to buy homes.

Documents obtained by Call 6 show that nine men with the business bought at least 32 homes between 2002 to 2007. All the houses are on the east side of Indianapolis, from Sherman Drive to Post Road and from 21st to 42nd streets.

Criminal charges filed Wednesday claim the men rented the homes to people who qualified for assistance from the Indianapolis Housing Agency.

Investigators said the renters had no idea that the landlords never paid the homes' mortgages or property taxes. All the homes are in foreclosure.

Investigators are trying to determine how the men -- who authorities said had small to modest incomes -- were able to get bank loans, Sanchez reported.

The nine men were charged with welfare fraud and theft. They are (with the amount of rent assistance they're accused of receiving illegally in parentheses): Anthony T. Morman ($185,964); Keith L. Thacker ($30,866); Lawrence J. Howard Jr. ($4,081); John White Jr. ($41,346); Corey J. Jones ($74,559); Jason Boyd ($100,125); John A. Williams Jr. ($2,533); Walter J. Powell ($17,332); and Kameron Beckum ($15,818).

Police said Moorman illegally collected rent assistance on 17 properties.

Court records show that White claimed a financial interest in at least seven homes, though his tax return shows he earned nothing in 2005.

Thacker reported having no income in 2004 but was involved in three homes, authorities said.

Indianapolis housing police, in cooperation with the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, were aware of the men for more than a year and let their operation continue in an effort to find more suspects, authorities said.