Elderly Ohio Widow A Victim Of Equity Stripping

In Licking County, Ohio, The Newark Advocate reports on now-former homeowner Reathel Patterson, who reportedly wound up being screwed over by someone purportedly willing to help save her home in a foreclousre rescue situation, but who merely stripped the equity from the home and allowed it to go into foreclosure.

• "He came in and said he'd buy the mortgage if I'd let him buy 40 acres of my land," Patterson said. "He'd redevelop it and give me, I believe, 34 percent of the proceeds." The man from northern Ohio was not Harry Blausey, charged two weeks ago with 30 counts related to an alleged mortgage fraud scheme, but some of Patterson's allegations from two years ago appear similar to current claims.

• Patterson's "savior" did not make the mortgage payments he said he would and used her home to borrow $180,000, Patterson said. She lost her home of 31 years, most of her belongings and all 60 acres of land. The bank resold her home and property for $284,000, she said. "I thought it was all legal, but he lied so much," Patterson said.

• "The bank made us get out right now. I've cried and done everything but kill myself." Patterson, 69, who now lives at Newark Healthcare Centre, said she tried to enlist the help of an attorney, but he wasn't interested.

For more, see Instead of finding helpers, homeowners found predators (Foreclosure fears became worse than imagined).

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