The
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a division of the U.S. Treasury, has issued a
new study showing that mortgage fraud in America is up once again, particularly foreclosure rescue schemes.
Officials from FinCEN, as the division is known, say that loan modification con-men or shady foreclosure specialists most often engaged in two common types of fraud:
• Conning homeowners into quit-claiming the deeds to their properties and then selling the houses from underneath the rightful owners; and
• Scamming struggling homeowners into paying upfront for high-priced loan modification services, but then failing to do anything for homeowners.
According to FinCEN, mortgage loan fraud jumped by 7.5% in the third quarter of 2009, compared with the same period in 2008. All told, there were 15,697 reported cases of mortgage loan fraud from July through September 2009, based on FinCEN's tracking of such data.
Industry Insiders Take Part in Scams Too
The report also revealed some interesting findings about where fraudulent activity is taking place most often, who is involved, and exactly what kind of shenanigans are going on. In particular:
• California and Florida had 42% of the mortgage loan fraud and "suspicious activity," but states like New York, Arizona, Texas. Illinois and Georgia also ranked among the top regions reporting home-related fraud cases.
• The individuals or "subjects" involved often involve "industry insiders," such as loan officers, underwriters and purported loan modification agents. That means that professional officers of the mortgage profession have been found to be scamming lenders or homeowners struggling to stop imminent foreclosures.
• On the flip side, other people are exploiting the chaotic atmosphere of the foreclosure crisis to scam legitimate lenders who are trying to help either would-be homeowners or existing homeowners facing foreclosure. This type of fraud detected ranged from people lying about living in a home, to fake Social Security numbers being used, to instances of forged or altered documentation.
For the full February 2010 Mortgage Loan Fraud Update issued by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network,
click here.
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Save Yourself from These Scams
Think you couldn't fall for a scam? Well, even when pennies are tight, a
new study says 1.3 million people have fallen for check scams and most of them have been taken for $3,000 or more! To protect yourself, peruse this list of the most prominent scams and keep your money safe.
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Save Yourself from These Scams
Think you couldn't fall for a scam? Well, even when pennies are tight, a new study says 1.3 million people have fallen for check scams and most of them have been taken for $3,000 or more! To protect yourself, peruse this list of the most prominent scams and keep your money safe.
Save Yourself from These Scams
The New "Oprah" Scam
No, Oprah would not ask you for your credit card information via email, so if you get a message saying you've been selected for some special episode and asked to send along your personal data, don't fall for it. The FBI just issued a warning to consumers about this new scam that uses Oprah's popularity to try to separate you from your money, first by thinking you're buying a plane ticket to her how in Chicago.
Find out how you can complain if you get this email by checking Mitch Lipka's latest Buyer Beware column.
Save Yourself from These Scams
"Spear Phishing"
This is not your ordinary stab-in-dark phishing scam, but such an extra-dangerous attempt to bilk you from your money that the FBI just issued a warning to consumers.
This is how the scam works: Rather than use a massive email blast, spear phishing attacks choose smaller, selected groups that share something in common. That could be anything from a workplace, to a bank to a website everyone purchased from.
Find out how to protect yourself.
Save Yourself from These Scams
Mystery Shopper or Processor
Work from home scams have been around for a long, long time, but thanks to a lousy economy they have become a growth market for frauds.
Many people have been duped by mystery shopping offers, some even combining the lure of getting paid for shopping (after paying a hefty fee for training) and the "overpayment" scam (see the next slide...).
Scammers might also sell you on the idea you could make money processing rebates or do billing. To learn how to enter this lucrative field you are sold a kit and most likely will get hit with subsequent monthly charges. The only ones making money on these deal are the crooks.
Save Yourself from These Scams
Getting Paid Too Much
This scam is enjoying a resurgence that folks using classified ads like Craigslist have been seeing. Someone answers your ad and offers to pay way too much for a service that is offered. Sometimes they say it is to pay their mover, who won't accept their check from a foreign bank. Often the person on the other end claims to be from another country. They tell you to keep what you're due and then refund them the rest. Just wait ... their check bounces and you're left high and dry.
Save Yourself from These Scams
The Check Isn't Real
The check comes in the mail. It's probably for a few thousand dollars. It's supposed to cover the fees you are to receive for a grant you've supposedly just been awarded, the lottery you've won or some other reward you never sought. Cash their check and then send that amount back to them (makes sense, right?) then you'll get a much fatter check. Problem is their check is bad, but you'll not likely find that out for a week or more -- after your money is long gone.
Save Yourself from These Scams
Your Auto Warranty Is Expiring -- Or Is It?
The automated call comes in on your cell phone or home phone. You're told your auto warranty is about to expire and if you don't act right away to keep it current you could lose coverage. Actually, what's happening is you're being sold an extended warranty. For some, the calls are ludicrous; they don't have cars. But for others they can be scary and, at a minimum, annoying and uses up minutes and battery time on your cell phone. The Better Business Bureau reports a huge spike in the number of complaints against those selling auto warranties.
Save Yourself from These Scams
The Nigerian Letter
This is one of the classic scams that just keeps coming back for more. It presents itself in new and different forms -- recently using a bogus note from the director of the FBI himself as the come-on. The Nigerian letter, also known as 419 fraud for the section of Nigerian law it violates, involves an e-mail (it really started as a letter) that seeks your help to stash some money for a foreign official in a jam. Your kindness in hanging onto their millions is supposed to be repaid by giving you a percentage. Instead, you end up sending your money to them.
Save Yourself from These Scams
Stimulus for Crooks
Whether it's letters supposedly from the Small Business Administration, bogus e-mails from the Internal Revenue Service or promises of "free" advice to get government grants, frauds are exploiting the idea that the federal government is distributing economic stimulus money. These phony notes solicit personal information intended to give the bad guys access to your credit or worse -- your cash. Remember, if something that appears to be from the government asks you for all sorts of personal information it's more likely from a crook trying to stimulate his or her own bank account.
Save Yourself from These Scams
What a Car Deal
It starts out with an ad for a car, most recently featuring people claiming they are about to be deployed with the military. The car is priced way below market value because they have to sell it quickly. You contact the seller and are told that you have to pay to an escrow service that they chose. The price is so good you don't want to lose out, so you agree to place a deposit or even pay the full amount to the "escrow service." It turns out it's not an escrow service and you don't end up with a car.
Save Yourself from These Scams
This latest report should be a wake-up call to cash-strapped homeowners everywhere: stay away from wolves in sheep's clothing who come knocking on your door promising for a hefty fee to help you "fix" your impending foreclosure problem. Get free help from your lender, the federal government (
http://MakingHomeAffordable.gov), or from legitimate non-profits and HUD-certified housing counselors, such as the National Foundation for Debt Management (
http://www.nfdm.org).
Options for Homeowners Who Can't Get Full Loan Modifications
Moreover, as I explained in my book
Your First Home: The Smart Way to Get It and Keep It, even if a full loan modification is not possible for any reason, your bank may be willing to discuss these three other options:
• Repayment Plans
Some of you might not have missed any payments yet, but maybe you're experiencing a cash crunch and your mortgage is making you feel financially squeezed. In this instance, you can ask your lender for a repayment plan that would allow you to make most – but not all – of your normal monthly payment. The amount of money you don't pay can be tacked on to the end of your mortgage. Alternatively, if you are facing a short-term financial issue which will soon pass, you can ask your lender to let you pay off the past due amount little by little, tacking extra payments onto future regular payments.
• Reinstatements
For those of you who've missed one or two payments, and now have the money (or will soon have the cash) to bring your account current, a reinstatement may do the trick. With a reinstatement, your lender will let you pay off what you owe over an agreed-upon time frame. You might have to pay late fees and penalties, or your lender might waive those charges.
• Forbearance
Lenders often use forbearance as a method of helping delinquent borrowers who are behind on their mortgages. Forbearance allows you to pay your arrears, or past due amount, at a later point in time. Whatever is overdue can be paid off in a variety of ways, over a period of many months or perhaps at the end of your mortgage term, when you sell or refinance your home loan. Sometimes, forbearance agreements even allow you to skip payments altogether or reduce the payment you must make for a set number of months.
Whatever you do, don't fall victim to the rising tide of foreclosure scams going on all across the country.
Lynnette Khalfani-Cox, an award-winning financial news journalist and former Wall Street Journal reporter for CNBC, has also been featured in top newspapers including the Washington Post, USA Today, and the New York Times, as well as magazines ranging from Essence and Redbook to Black Enterprise and Smart Money. Check out her personal finance community site, and ask Lynnette a question at:
http://askthemoneycoach.com/
Comments: (1)
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By: Barbara Ann Jackson on 4/14/2010 12:03AM
Some Home Foreclosures are Actually Disguised Real Estate Extortions
Some people think that those who fall delinquent on their mortgage debts deserve whatever happens to them. Deadbeats, is what they call us, even when becoming delinquent on a debt was an unavoidable occurrence. Some of us (like me) did not know that marriage failure would bankrupt us; or there would be medical bills; or job layoffs -but yes, some folks lived beyond their means. All the same, this narrative is about what collection on a loan via fraud and deception can do to a person, (too few people know about dark sides of real estate lending and borrowing).
My story is not a sour grapes foreclosure story; I am not so much calling attention to loss of a home, but rather, to nearly irreparable wrongs that occurred in connection with real estate extortion. My true verifiable story is about how -like an overrun creature lying in the street, my brutal adversaries maimed and left me there! And while I wince in pain, I anguish also for others who have been wronged by brutes. I do not have any other choice except to raise my pen and voice until vindication arrives; and authorities stop the wrongdoers from continuing their harms. Moreover, my situation has little to do with whether I have forgiven them, but it is about my lack of freedom and impediments to my ability to pursue happiness and employment to jobs of my choice, and for which I qualify.
For 4 years, I fought through the court systems to prevent the fraudulent taking of my home. In so doing, I was repeatedly ravished by merciless litigators. They caused me lost jobs and blacklisting. I was always vilified and made to seem like a crazy outcast. I was persecuted and castigated by judges; I spent lots of ill-affordable money in legal costs; my privacy was shockingly, repeatedly invaded; I was falsely arrested; at one occasion, I was so tormented, I went to the bathroom on myself; and my freedom yet remains in jeopardy. Also, there's an amazing plethora of distorted humiliating documents and statements about me in New Orleans federal court records. Such pleadings, records, and documents would never have been if it I were not opposing that foreclosure fraud, as court systems are the only means of opposing an unlawful foreclosure. (And yes, I knew, like most African-Americans know, that seldom do 'our kind' prevail in New Orleans federal courts -unless a controversy is well-known to the public, and skewed decisions would be too obvious.) To put things bluntly, the merciless suffering to which I have been / and am being subjected to is because: (a) I would not cooperate with unlawfully losing my home; and (b) the n_____r b____, as I was called, needs to know her place. In gist, this is what happened:
Foreclosure mill attorney, Adcock, deliberately filed a foreclosure in the name of an entity which (GE Capital Mortgage Services, Inc) did not have standing for my New Orleans mortgage loan. Although I did not know why Adcock committed that fraud and other frauds, I recognized that my home was being taken through illegal means. I filed judicial challenges, in which I asserted and proved the foreclosure was impossible due to the foreclosure plaintiff's non-existence. (I might not have been inclined to fight so hard for my home if it were not for the deceptive method in which I could lose it.) The frauds were the red flags that led me to search and find out there was no "perfected lien" on my home; and that a novated loan document was not lawfully enforceable.
Even up to this date, . . .” *Read entire article @ http://newsblaze.com/story/20100411123047lawg.nb/topstory.html
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