Friday, May 20, 2011

Sacramento-Area Foreclosure Rescue Operator Gets 32 Months For Role In Fractional Interest Deed Transfer Bankruptcy Scam

In Sacramento, California, The Sacramento Bee reports:
  • Charles C. Jamison assured potential customers he was a foreclosure stopper, someone who could, for a fee, save their homes from trustee sales. It worked for a while, until federal fraud stoppers stepped in. The 30-year-old Citrus Heights resident pleaded guilty in February and was sentenced Tuesday to two years and eight months in prison.

This is the scheme to which he admitted:

  1. Distressed homeowners in the Sacramento region received fliers in which Jamison, using an alias, promised he could, through a program he called "Stop Now," halt an impending sale.

  2. The charge: $1,000 a month, and he claimed that included mortgage payments.

  3. Between July 2007 and May 2009, he persuaded desperate people to take desperate measures. Via notarized and recorded grant deeds, they transferred partial interests in their homes to fictitious entities created and controlled by Jamison.

  4. Under the names of those entities, he then filed petitions in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Sacramento, resulting in automatic stays of foreclosure proceedings.

  5. The lenders were delayed in foreclosing on properties in default, while being forced to pay lawyers to contest the sham bankruptcies.

  6. According to a written plea bargain, "a reasonable estimate of the loss to the financial institutions cannot … be determined." Prosecutors and Jamison agreed his gain from the rip-off was between $120,000 and $200,000.

Source: Man gets prison term in foreclosure rip-off.

See Final Report Of The Bankruptcy Foreclosure Scam Task Force for a discussion of fractional interest deed transfer scams and other foreclosure rescue rackets involving the abuse of the bankruptcy courts.

Go here for other posts on fractional interest deed transfer, foreclosure rescue bankruptcy scams.