Housing scams

[Little Miss Sunshine]

Somewhat related to DMY's news item (http://antifraudintl.org/showpost.php?p=32096&postcount=35) about scammers pretending to have rental properties, there's also this:

[LINK (http://www.philly.com/dailynews/national/20080530_Scammers_steal_homes_from_those_in_need_o f_rescue.html)]


Scammers steal homes from those in need of rescue

"WE BUY HOUSES FOR CA$H" or "Refinance Your Mortgage!"

But in some cases, these "solutions" are worse than the problem.

Legitimate foreclosure rescue services are often nonprofits and don't normally charge upfront fees; also, homeowners usually come to them seeking help.

The scammers, on the other hand, find potential victims by combing through public records to see who is in danger of being foreclosed. Then they bombard them with calls or direct-mail solicitations that sometimes look like letters from a government agency.

In one type of scam, a consultant demands an upfront fee of $1,000 or more to negotiate with the loan provider on the owner's behalf for a more affordable loan, but then the company does little or nothing. Besides being $1,000 poorer, the owner also has lost valuable time he or she could have used to work out a plan with the provider.

In another common rescue scheme, the foreclosure consultant convinces a homeowner to sign over the home's title, either to the consultant or a third party. The homeowner remains in the house and pays rent, believing that he is buying time to get back on track and that the consultant will eventually sell the home back to him again.

But in some cases, the rent charged to the homeowner is even higher than the mortgage payments. If the homeowner can't pay, he's evicted. Or the consultant refinances the house, often multiple times, draining the equity.

Sometimes, property owners don't even know they have given away their homes. Many of the victims are elderly, uneducated or don't speak English.

Without laws against rescue scams, prosecutors can go after the perpetrators by claiming they violated deceptive-advertising statutes, but the threshold for proving fraud is high. Additionally, when the scammer produces a stack of contracts the victims have signed - even if the owners were deceived about what they were signing - prosecutors have no case against the rescue consultants.

And as depressing as that is, there's this (http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/housing/2007-01-24-home-scammer_x.htm) too.

[Little Miss Sunshine]

[LINK (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/19/eveningnews/main696675.shtml)]

Also depressing :(


Scam artists look for empty homes then obtain a blank deed from any office supply store. They fill it out, forge the signature, have it notarized and file it. At that point, the house is considered officially sold.

[Little Miss Sunshine]

This one is from last year.


Oct. 29--DORIS LYNCH sat outside a City Hall courtroom last week clutching a green folder stuffed with legal documents and pictures of her 12-year-old son. She was waiting -- for her attorney to show up, for a judge to give her back her house, for the future she envisioned for her son.

"This is who I'm fighting for," she said of her son Michael.

Lynch is a victim of a surprisingly common crime in Philadelphia -- someone stole her house.

The narrow two-story Port Richmond rowhouse, across the street from the ball fields of a city recreation center, wasn't much to look at when Lynch bought it 11 years ago. Beset with medical problems, Lynch listed her son on the deed so that he would have something if her health failed.

Joseph Eibell Jr. walked into an auto tag and insurance office on nearby Allegheny Avenue on Feb. 9 with someone who claimed to be Lynch and signed away ownership of the house for $1.

One buck. That's what Eibell paid for Lynch's dream.

Eibell, now facing an arrest warrant for six felony and two misdemeanor counts of property and identity theft, sold the house two months later to a real estate investor for $35,000. Lynch, who had been living in Florida for five years, had allowed back taxes and old utility bills to pile up.

Eibell paid about $10,000 to clear that up, so he walked away with a $25,000 payday.

Lynch moved home this year and found volunteer organizations to help her rehab the house, which is little more than a boarded up shell that has been stripped of pipes and fixtures in recent years by vandals. Then she learned she no longer owns it.

Eibell lives five blocks from Lynch's house but wasn't home last week when I stopped by. He called me later, clearly upset that Lynch was telling her story.

Eibell has offered her $15,000 for the house, which he says is the profit he made from the sale.

"She can take it or not," Eibell said of the money. "She'd be really stupid not to take it."

So he's not just an accused thief. He's a charmer too.

I asked Eibell if he forged the deed to sell the house.

"I guess all that will come out in court," was his answer.

Eibell has some experience in court, including previous run-ins with the law and outstanding charges of theft from an unrelated case. He had a criminal court hearing on that matter last week but skipped a civil court hearing about Lynch's stolen house.

Hearings for Lynch's case have been postponed five times since June and her frustration was starting to show. Her attorney, Henry Clinton, told Common Pleas Court Judge Esther Sylvester about Eibell's $15,000 offer, adding that the title insurance company that handled the sale to the new owner has also offered to kick in about $5,000.

Clinton, working the case for free as part of the Philadelphia Volunteers for the Indigent Program, is encouraging Lynch to consider the offer, especially since the volunteers who offered to fix up the house now think the work may be too extensive for them to handle.

Sylvester, who has been assigned to hear cases of fraudulently transferred deeds because there are so many claims in the city, had the same idea. "Twenty thousand is a lot of . . . You have to consider that," she told Lynch.

Sense says Lynch should grab the money if Eibell comes through with his offer. But she is having trouble letting go of her plan to leave her son the house someday. The new dream now for her is to reclaim the house.

It's a long-shot, especially since there's no evidence that the new owner did anything wrong.

"It wasn't a mansion to begin with," Lynch told the judge, her voice cracking. "I realize it's not much. But it's all I have."