Long Island Homeowner Gains $3.5 Million Judgment In Foreclosure Rescue Scam

On Long Island, New York, Newsday reports:

• A Great Neck woman victimized in a mortgage fraud in which she unknowingly gave away her house has won a $3.5-million judgment against the mortgage broker who scammed her, court documents show. Priscila Nano, 66, said she was "scared" and on the brink of losing her longtime home to foreclosure in 2004 when she received an advertisement from the Westbury-based Foreclosure Options Inc., and called the company's number. In court papers, Nano's attorneys described her as "an underemployed, senior citizen and immigrant with a modest command of the English language ... desperate to keep her home." Nano's attorney, Douglas Good of Uniondale, said the company, headed by Moses Crawford III, was so predatory that it even sent a town car to Nano's home to bring her to what she believed was a closing of a refinance of her home.

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• The Uniondale firm of Ruskin Moscou Faltischek took Nano's case pro bono, and worked out a settlement in which she recouped from her mortgage carrier most of the value of her home. Good and associate Jennifer Hillman then sued Crawford seeking punitive damages. When Crawford did not respond to the suit, State Supreme Court Justice John Galasso last month awarded Nano a $3.5-million judgment.

For more, see Woman gets $3.5M judgment in mortgage scam.