Mortgage Scams Lead to Debt And Harassment
The Federal Trade Commission has stepped up its investigations and prosecutions of mortgage relief scam artists. Since the start of 2013, the FTC has obtained settlements from over 20 individuals and companies involved with scamming distressed homeowners. In the most recent cases, two individuals and seven companies settled FTC charges that they victimized more than a thousand people through “mass joinder lawsuits” and “forensic loan audits.” They violated the Mortgage Assistance Relief Services (MARS) Rule, which was set up to curb deceptive and unfair practices related to such services.
The FTC contends that Sameer Lakhany, Brian Pacios, Precision Law Center, Inc., Precision Law Center LLC, National Legal Network, Inc., and Assurity Law Group, Inc. targeted consumers with a mass joinder scam. They promised homeowners that they could stop their foreclosures or obtain some other mortgage relief if they joined together to sue the lenders. The defendants represented themselves as a law firm called Precision Law Center, charging between $6,000 and $10,000 in up-front fees. But every suit was dismissed soon after it was filed; the victims saw none of the promised relief.
One of the scam artists, Lakhany, was also involved in a “forensic loan audit” scam, along with The Credit Shop, LLC, Titanium Realty, Inc., and Fidelity Legal Services LLC. These defendants called themselves nonprofit organizations, with domain names like “FreeFedLoanMod.org,” “HouseholdRelief.org,” and “MyHomeSupport.org;” but really they sold people an auditing service, which supposedly found lender violations in mortgage documents. The defendants charged $800 to nearly $1,600 for this service, which never led to a single favorable loan modification for the victims.