Across the U.S., families are losing their homes to the false promises of low mortgage payments. Scammers are posing as home modification loan officers who promise a cheap monthly payment but instead pocket all of your hard earned cash.
“It sucks losing all of that money and not knowing where you’re going to go, that’s bad,” Whitney and Beau Starr tell KING-TV. The Starr’s say they were good home owners but ran into some trouble and needed to refinance. They called their lender, Wells Fargo but were denied the refinance.
A few days later they received a call from “US Recovery Program,” a company that could help them refinance, plus they were part of a government funded program, so they thought. To get in on the deal the Starr’s needed to pay $3600 up front. After that their payments would go down to a whopping $400 a month, something the Starr’s were relying on. Each month they paid “US Recovery,” their $400 mortgage. Things began to spiral out of control when they received a call from Wells Fargo, wondering why they had stopped paying their mortgage.
After paying more than $9,000 to what they thought was their mortgage the Starr’s learned the difficult truth that they had been a part of the latest home modification scam and their house would now be going up for auction.
The Starr’s are working with some real government officials to try and track down the crooks.
Experts say you best bet to avoid foreclosure is to only pay your lender. If you run in to trouble you can seek assistance from a government housing counselor.
