Monday, June 09, 2008

NYC Feds Get Guilty Pleas From Two In Equity Stripping, Foreclosure Rescue Scam

In New York City, The Associated Press reports:

  • One company billed itself as a white knight that could rescue desperate homeowners from foreclosure. The other passed itself off as an honest brokerage that helped wealthy New Yorkers get mortgages to buy $1 million apartments. In reality, both firms dealt primarily in fraud, according to prosecutors.

  • Two Brooklyn mortgage specialists pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges this week in a pair of loosely related cases that cost banks millions of dollars and led to some people losing their homes.

  • Maurice McDowall, the owner of a "foreclosure rescue" company called Lost and Found Recovery, copped to an indictment accusing his firm of persuading scores of struggling families to enroll in a program to "save" their homes by temporarily signing them away to someone else. Mortgage broker Aleksander Lipkin admitted criminal wrongdoing in both that case and a separate fraud in which his firm, Lending Universe, used bogus paperwork to arrange more than $200 million in loans they knew would probably never be repaid.
For more, see 2 plead guilty in NY mortgage frauds targeting homeowners.

See also:

Go here for other posts on foreclosure rescue operator Maurice McDowall.

Go here for other criminal prosecutions of foreclosure rescue operators.

For more on equity stripping scams, generally, see DREAMS FORECLOSED: The Rampant Theft of Americans' Homes Through Equity-stripping Foreclosure 'Rescue' Scams (4.61 MB approx.).