NYC Woman Victimized In Foreclosure Rescue Scam Temporarily Dodges The Boot As Neighbors Jam City Agency Phone Lines In Effort To Call Off Eviction

In St. Albans, Queens, the New York Daily News reports:

• FRANCIS BLACKMAN knew the day was coming when city marshals would show up and evict her from the St. Albans home that had been in her family for more than 15 years. But when they knocked on her door last week, she had a backup plan.

• Blackman enlisted the help of neighbors, who flooded the city's 311 line, the police and several city agencies with calls protesting the eviction. They argued that she was entitled to a temporary stay, since she'd filed for bankruptcy just days before. And it worked.

• "They got me some time," said Blackman, 55, who is being ousted after her home went into foreclosure in what she believes is a case of deed theft - a scam that has become all too common in southeastern Queens.(1) Blackman is one 10 homeowners in the area who have banded together after becoming victims of the mortgage crisis. Some are in the midst of foreclosure proceedings and others are fighting evictions that have already happened.(2)

For more, see Foreclosure scam victim staying put for now.

(1) According to the story, Blackman said she was duped by a woman city property records identify as Orit Tuil, who came to her door in 2006 claiming to be a foreclosure specialist after she and her stepmother missed payments on the $180,000 mortgage. "She said that I would have to sign over the deed to her," Blackman reportedly said of the woman. "I was ignorant to what goes on after that." The $180,000 mortgage was paid back, then Tuil took out two mortgages totaling $405,000, according to property records. "This was a common scheme back then when money was being lent so easily," said Lynn Armentrout, a lawyer at the City Bar Justice Center, the pro bono affiliate of the New York City Bar. "What they usually do is refinance, strip all the equity out of the house, then disappear."

(2) Among those helping in the effort was one woman who was evicted from her home in 2005 and is still trying to prove that her mother was a victim of an identity theft scam that resulted in a stranger taking over their home.