In separate actions, Attorney General Jerry Brown has ordered 386 mortgage foreclosure consultants, including 113 in Orange County, to post $100,000 bonds and register with the Attorney General’s office. Those companies that do not register face the possibility of both criminal and civil prosecution. Brown also ordered twenty five companies to verify “suspicious” loan modification claims made online and through the mail. “Hoping to lower their mortgage payments, thousands of homeowners were instead duped by slick advertising and money-back guarantees,” Brown said. “The time for accountability is at hand, and this rogue industry must clean itself up or face legal action.”
On a national level, “Operation Loan Lies” follows an announcement by FTC Chairman Leibowitz, Attorney General Eric Holder, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan that there would be a crack-down on companies that were set up to defraud homeowners seeking home loan modifications. The FTC recently announced that the operation had filed 189 actions by 25 federal and state agencies against fraudulent loan shops that used deceptive marketing to push their misleading or non-existent foreclosure rescue and mortgage modification services.
It is in this environment that The Feldman Law Center is announcing the acceleration of their Outreach and Recovery Program due to the number of homeowners facing imminent foreclosure as a result of loan modification companies that either could not or would not deliver on their promises to their clients. To address the urgency faced by homeowners dealing with imminent foreclosure, the program offers high priority status featuring attorney driven foreclosure intervention while the loan modification process is re-built and started again with lenders.