Mortgage and Loan Scams

Unwanted email and faxes advertising impossibly low rate mortgages or loans.

The housing market in the United States has been booming and is now slowing. This sort of up and down means significant amounts of money are changing hands. Scammers are posing as agents and banks to obtain personal information, steal people's money and even their houses. The targets are often elderly homeowners looking to make some extra cash by refinancing or taking out an equity line. Also, many individuals are buying and selling property without agents to save money(FSBO) Acording to the FBI there were 21,971 mortgage fraud cases in 2005 totalling over $1 billion in losses, this up from fewer than 600 in 2004 and even less in 2003. It is running "rampant" according to sources. Some of the hot spots are Michigan and Florida.

Mortgage transactions are complex legal and financial agreements. If you are not knowledgeable about them predators can take your money and even property.

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Cases

• Send the junk mail to us
• Read Freddie Mac's "Don't Borrow Trouble" before even thinking of getting a loan
• Don't do business with junk mailers and faxers
• Use this form(fdic.gov) to check and see if is truly an FDIC insured institution(United States)
• Authorized lenders are required to disclose license information. If it's not there, they are not a real bank.
  Check with your state licensing boards to see if they are for real (CT, FL, CA, NY, MI, VA ).
• Always have a real-estate professional and/or lawyer review any transaction
• Check with a service like realtor.org to see if an agent is legitimate. Contact

Resources

Cases

ui726.com


This is a junk mail message(with an obfuscated URL no less) that leads to the following site:

There is no address, phone number, FDIC or Equal Housing Lender information, or even the name of the institution. Just this fake rate-checking form. Compare this with a site like ditech.com which discloses their state licenses clearly on rate checking forms.

Samples