Loan Modification Firms Swarm Courthouses To Find Leads; Cash-Strapped Homeowners Find Mailboxes Stuffed With Junk Mail, Salespeople On Doorstep

A recent editorial in The New York Times makes this observation:

• The demise of the subprime mortgage industry has been hard on predatory brokers, too. They feasted for years on bad loans until reality crashed down and the money ran out, and there they were: sharks without a frenzy.

• Now they are circling again. Predators of every sort have regrouped and returned to their old ways, this time as loan-modification companies, inserting themselves between hard-strapped homeowners and banks, offering to work deals — for cash up front.

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• Troubled homeowners know all about the relentlessness of the loan-rescue racket: it fills their mailboxes and sends salespeople to lurk on their doorsteps. Foreclosure filings are public records, and loan modifiers routinely swarm courthouses to find leads.

• Loan counselors at the Long Island Housing Partnership, a respected nonprofit in Hauppauge, N.Y., tell of scammers crashing its housing workshops, posing as troubled borrowers, then working the crowd with sales pitches.(1)

For more, see Return of the Predators.

(1) Some state attorneys general have already started going after these loan modification firms. For example, there are ongoing efforts by the state AGs in Illinois, Tennessee, Colorado, and Florida. Further, state AGs in Tennessee and Florida have reportedly also included allegations of unauthorized practice of law in their actions against loan modification firms.