Mortgage Fraud

The Texas Attorney General arrested four this week who brazenly continued their mortgage fraud operation while out on bail. Authorities re-arrested the mortgage fraud gang adding additional charges to earlier indictments.

Texas Mortgage Fraud Continues

The Texas Attorney General released a press release announcing new charges for a previously indicted mortgage fraud gang saying,

Carrington Mortgage Services LLC is being used by a bogus email to spread a virus when the attachment is downloaded. If you get such and email, know the sender of this spam is not Carrington Mortgage Services LLC and do not download the attachment.

The spammers ruse works like this…

Mortgage originators tell you your mortgage lock is in force when it is NOT. Lying about your mortgage lock status is a common practice to increase loan revenue or cover loan officer mistakes.

Loan officers are always trying to make the most yield spread revenue on every mortgage. Telling you the mortgage lock is placed but then not actually locking the rate with the wholesale mortgage company allows them to “play the market” with your money.

Never use a real estate referral from a real estate agent to locate your mortgage company as you may find yourself the victim of a common con game. Real estate referral cons can cost you dearly!

The servicing mortgage company is the company to whom you make your payments. The servicing mortgage banks prey on your erroneous belief you can save time and money refinancing with them.

Refinancing with your current servicing mortgage company gives absolutely no cost or time savings!

But they know, you don’t know that.

The mortgage application deposit scam is a long running scam. The idea is to get your mortgage application and the accompanying deposit at all costs!

Saying or doing virtually anything to get your signature on the mortgage application along with your deposit is the name of the game.

Typical sales “hooks” used in the mortgage application deposit scam:

A Good Faith Estimate is a legally required mortgage document showing costs, rate, and payment. Believing the Good Faith Estimate reflects truthful, accurate, and guaranteed figures is folly.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Good Faith Estimate is manipulated by the loan officer low balling the costs and rate morphing it from a mortgage disclosure into a selling tool. It does not reflect real mortgage rates or actual closing costs.

So I recently got an email from a person calling himself a Certified Public Accountant desiring to debate the efficacy of the supposed “no cost” mortgage made popular by the ubiquitous advertising propogated primarily by Lenox Financial and now Countrywide Home Loans. As you’ll see below, don’t expect any mortgage help from CPAs when it comes to seeing the financial rip-offs these loans embody.