Erie Predatory Loan Victim May Be Closer To Keeping Home As Settlement In Civil Suit Reached With Three Defendants

In Erie, Pennsylvania, the Erie Times News reports:

• An area appraiser, a now-indicted mortgage broker and a mortgage company are the latest defendants(1) to settle a court case that helped reveal the depth of a federal mortgage-fraud probe in the city of Erie. The settlements are expected to allow the plaintiff, Eloise Woodsbey, to keep her house at 618 E. Ninth St. Woodsbey risked losing the single-family residence, which she bought for $49,900 in 2004, because of what she claimed was a fraudulent $45,000 variable-rate mortgage with terms she could not afford, including an initial interest rate of 11.75 percent.

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• Woodsbey claimed the defendants used a falsely inflated appraisal and other fraudulent practices to sell her the house and help her secure the mortgage. In her suit, Woodsbey claimed the developers in the deal helped her qualify for the mortgage by misrepresenting -- unbeknownst to her -- the amount of money she had in her bank account.

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• The lawyer for Woodsbey, Kevin Quisenberry, of the nonprofit Community Justice Project in Pittsburgh, declined to comment on the terms of the tentative settlements. Based on prior court filings, another lawyer for Woodsbey, Margaret Schuetz, also of the Community Justice Project, filed the suit so that Woodsbey could keep her house and get money to repair it.

For more, see 3 more settle in mortgage-fraud case.

For an earlier Erie Times News report on this story, see Fraud suit nears end (Tentative deal with Deutsche Bank likely to stop foreclosure against eastside woman).

(1) The defendants who most recently reached tentative settlements with Woodsbey are Meritage Mortgage, of Jacksonville, Fla., the initial lender; Hurlburt Appraisal Service, of Meadville, which did the first appraisal of Woodsbey's house; and Francis R. Conti, of Waterford, the mortgage broker on the deal. Deutsche Bank, which took over Woodsbey's account from Meritage in a purchase of a pool of mortgage-backed securities, said in February that it had settled with Woodsbey.