Foreclosure Rescue Scammers’ Top 5 Tricks

With foreclosures reaching record highs all across the country, the number of scam artists that have cropped up to con people out of their money and homes is truly alarming. The FBI reports that mortgage fraud convictions have doubled in the past year and expects an increase in the number of foreclosure rescue scams. If you are a homeowner facing tough times, it’s up to you to educate yourself on the tactics fraudsters will typically use to con you out of everything you possess. You can protect yourself from being a victim if you know what to look out for.

The only way to truly avoid being scammed out of your home and hard-earned money is to be well informed on the subject. It’s easy for scammers to throw phony credentials and fake testimonials at you while intimidating you with complex legal lingo to get you to do what they want. Many homeowners have no idea that they are being scammed, so they don’t take any legal action when they do lose out. The scammer easily walks away after pocketing your money or the equity in your home without any legal ramifications. In almost all these situations, it’s difficult for lawyers to make any type of case stick because the scammer has a stack of documents that the homeowner has willingly signed.

Foreclosure is such a scary and confusing process that homeowner’s become easy prey to con artists who know just how to take advantage of their distress. In their desperation to save their home at any cost, homeowners easily end up becoming victims of scams they wouldn’t ordinarily have fallen for and lose the home they were so anxious to save. A scammer will typically promise a homeowner a fresh new start and build up their hopes with a quick way out. Some of the popular tactics used by con artists include-

1) Offering the homeowner an option to buy back their house at the end of a pre-determined lease period, with the additional incentive of helping them acquire the financing necessary to do so.

2) Persuading the homeowner to agree to a lease agreement that they can’t really afford. Their monthly payments will typically be higher than their old mortgage payments.

3) Getting the homeowner to take out a second more expensive loan, while being fully aware of the fact that the homeowner cannot afford the new mortgage.

4) Having the homeowner transfer ownership of their house to the scammer, with or without their awareness by employing a number of strategies.

5) Persuading the homeowner to sign documents they don’t fully understand or getting their signature on incomplete paperwork. The scammer will fill in the blanks later.

All these solutions will invariably be accompanied with the sales pitch of giving you enough time to fix your finances and get your credit in order. Con artists usually find it easy to get away with it all because they ask you to follow instructions conducive to keeping you in the dark. They’ve established enough trust using a combination of lies and half-truths to get you to follow what they say without question. The advice the scammer gives you will be the exact opposite of what you should be doing.

By the time you realize that you are being conned it may be too late to stop the foreclosure.