Friday, May 01, 2009

Ohio AG Targets Loan Modification Firm Accused Of Pocketing Upfront Fees In Exchange For Empty Promises

In Conneaut, Ohio, WKYC-TV Channel 3 reports:
  • The companies promise to rescue you from losing your home. Instead, they take your money and do nothing. Just ask Carol Jenkins of Conneaut. She and and her late son, Robert Curtis, trusted James Van Putten and his local company, Please Save My Home, to rescue them from foreclosure. "He was in town here, so I trusted him," Jenkins said. But she and her son soon discovered Van Putten's promises were empty ones. "I never got any phone calls back from him whatsoever,'' Jenkins told Channel 3 News. "By this time, we had already paid him the $650 (fee), so we didn't have any money to send to our mortgage company."

***

  • [Ohio Attorney General] Richard Cordray has filed suit against Van Putten and his Conneaut company on behalf of dozens of customers in nine counties who say they were swindled.

For more, see Foreclosure rescue scams target most vulnerable.

For the Ohio Attorney General press release on this case, the accompanying lawsuit, and copies of the correspondence and contract used by the foreclosure rescue operator (Exhibits A thru D), see Mortgage Rescue Company Sued for Consumer Fraud.