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Scam artists prey on area homeowners struggling with costs

By Bo Poertner/Associate Editor

Ricardo Damaso was in a bind.

The 54-year-old Lompoc man, a line cook at the Doubletree Resort in Santa Barbara, had suffered an injury that required surgery. Unable to work after the operation last July, he couldn’t make his mortgage payments.

Damaso asked his bank to revamp his loan, but there seemed to be little progress, and he was afraid he was going to lose his home on the city’s west side, where he and his wife, Victorina, and their eight children had lived since Sept. 1, 2006.

His fear made Damaso a prime target for predators preying on homeowners struggling with mortgage payments in a recessionary economy and plummeting housing market.

Mortgage scam artists are hard at work looking for easy targets, said Jennifer L. Glimp, a real estate fraud investigator in the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office. It’s an inevitable fallout from the numerous recent foreclosures, she said.

Glimp said she is reviewing complaints from throughout the county, including information about Damaso’s case.

She is interested in hearing from anyone in the Santa Ynez Valley as well.

“It’s countywide,” Glimp said. “You’re going to see more and more people go to these people who are losing their homes and offer help with modifications of their loans.”

Often the victims are non-English-speaking homeowners, she said.

District Attorney Christie Stanley recently posted information on her Web site alerting homeowners to mortgage fraud.

“Real estate fraud strikes at the heart of the American dream, where a sophisticated criminal can victimize dozens of people at a time by stealing their life savings and their most valuable asset — their homes,” Stanley said in the posting.

Speaking through an interpreter, Damaso said he and his son had taken out a variable-rate mortgage, two loans that gave him 100-percent financing and allowed him to avoid mortgage insurance payments on a $405,000 house.

In addition to his initial payment of $2,295 per month, he was to begin paying $777 per month in September.

Damaso asked his bank in July for a home-loan modification and filled out the application, but he said it was never clear that he was going to get it. He became more concerned after several weeks passed and he still hadn’t heard from the bank.

Eventually, desperate to save his home, he sought help through a third party.

On Sept. 24, Damaso attended a home mortgage seminar sponsored by the Lompoc Hispanic Committee of the Chamber of Commerce. He said he wanted to see if other homeowners were having similar problems getting mortgages modified.

At the seminar, he learned about scams and he learned that he had done the right thing by contacting the bank directly about modifying his home loan.

A week later, Damaso met with Realtor and broker Maria Aguiniga of MDA Realty & Financial, and lender Nicholas Gonzales of High-Tech lending, the husband and wife team who had conducted the seminar.

“We told him to call the bank, and (explained) the paperwork he was going to need for the bank to look at his scenario,” Aguiniga said.

Damaso said he called the bank, but could reach no one, which only re-enforced his concern about not getting the loan modification.

On Oct. 23, the bank finally called Damaso. He said he was driving on Ocean Avenue and pulled over and for an hour answered questions about his income and explained his situation — his injury, his surgery, his struggle to make ends meet.

Nearly in tears, he told the bank representative, “I want to keep my house. Help me keep my house.”

A few weeks later, when he hadn’t heard from the bank again, Damaso’s anxiety rose. An acquaintance told him about a San Fernando Valley company that was helping her with her bank loan and could help him smooth the way with the bank and get the loan modification that he needed.

It was an unfortunate but not uncommon irony in real estate scams — one victim referring the predator to another victim.

“There won’t be just one victim. There will be numerous victims. People think it’s working, so they pass the word along,” Glimp said.

A woman who said she worked for a company called “Processing Gurus LLC” came to Damaso’s house. She told him she was there to assist him and had many clients in the area.

She asked Damaso which state in Mexico he was from, then told him she was from the same area. She said she had recently relocated to the Santa Ynez Valley, and told how she worked long hours on behalf of her clients, to lower their mortgage payments.

He finally agreed to let the woman represent him, he said, because he was unable to keep in close contact with the bank, and she assured him she could do that. She was articulate and convincing, he said.

The woman collected from Damaso two months of his bank statements, his income tax papers for two years, his Social Security number and other personal information.

She told him the company charged $3,000 to resolve his mortgage issue with the bank and would require the money up front.

“I didn’t have $3,000 up front. I didn’t have a lot of money,” Damaso said.

That night, Nov. 5, he said, he gave the woman a check for $500. A week later, Damaso said, she returned and demanded another payment. He wrote her another $500 check, but said he dated it Nov. 17, when he would have enough money in the bank to cover it.

The company attempted to cash the second check, then a representative called Damaso to complain when there were insufficient funds to cover it, he said. He was told to contact the woman and to let her know when the money would be available, he said. Damaso said he later stopped payment on the second check.

In the meantime, the company sent Damaso a bank deposit slip in the name of G & G Investment of Van Nuys, so that he could directly deposit the $2,000 balance, he said. Soon a follow-up call arrived from the company representative, he said.

But Damaso soon learned the truth — that the woman who had taken his money had done nothing to help him.

He arrived home at 3 a.m. from a trip of Los Angeles and found a Fed-Ex package awaiting him. It was from his bank. The modification of the first loan had been approved. He took the papers to Aguiniga and told her about the woman and the “Processing Gurus.”

“That’s when he knew that these people had nothing to do with it. That’s when it clicked,” Aguiniga said. “He feels bad, really bad, because he can’t believe they are doing that to their own people.”

Bank officials later told Damaso that they had been working on the modification since July, when he first called them and filled out the application.

“I am angry — that they (con artists) came into my house and did that, like a thief coming into my own house and burglarizing it,” Damaso said.

Contacted by the Valley News, the woman who visited Damaso’s home declined to answer questions about her dealings with him. She described herself as a messenger for her employer and said that to her knowledge the company is doing nothing illegal. She declined to identify her employer or provide a telephone number. She said he wanted no publicity.

Damaso said that although he has lost $500, it appears that he will be able to save his home.

The bank has reduced the amount of his first loan from $324,000 to $190,000 plus $15,000 for the payments he missed. So his new first loan is $205,000 at 5.01 percent for 37 years. His new payment is $1,024, with the second loan soon to be modified, he said.

“I am very happy, right now,” Damaso said.

Other homeowners weren’t as lucky as Damaso.

Aguiniga said the woman who referred Damaso to “The Processing Gurus” had paid $3,000 up front. When she met with Aguiniga, they called the bank and learned very quickly that no one had contacted the mortgage lender on her behalf. The woman also learned that she cannot afford the house she was buying and will lose it, Aguiniga said.

Another victim, Aguiniga said, paid several thousand dollars to a different con artist, this one operating in Santa Maria, only to learn that her home is weeks away from a foreclosure sale.

Aguiniga said she is helping the woman work with the bank in an attempt to save her home.

WHAT TO DO:

— If you believe you are a victim of real estate or mortgage fraud, contact one of the following agencies: Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department, 934-6150; District Attorney, 737-7871.

Prepare a written explanation of what happened, including the following:

— A brief overview of the events that occurred.

— Names, addresses and telephone numbers of the people and companies involved.

— Copies of all documents you signed or that were given to you, including contracts or agreements.

— Copies of canceled checks or money orders — both front and back — that you gave in payment or that were given to you as payments.

— Include your printed name, address and telephone number.

bpoertner@syvnews.com