Mortgage scams still rampant

Mortgage scams still rampant By Eric T. Campbell
The Michigan Citizen

DETROIT — After being forcibly evicted in January, Eugene Moore is fighting to recover his home.

His ongoing battle began in 2004 when he and others in his Northend community signed on with a Birmingham, Michigan, based company called Rym Technologies. Most of the participants were not in foreclosure but many, like Moore, were underemployed and had fallen behind on mortgage payments.

Moore says that he was given $1,500 by Rym Tech to participate in the program and was promised comparable sums for each homeowner he brought in to sign up. What he didn’t know was that Rym Tech was perpetrating a mortgage scam now known as "equity stripping." By 2006 Moore had lost all equity in his home through Rym Tech's "Mortgage Reduction" program and was in a court battle to keep possession of it.

Victims of the deception were promised a free and clear house in five years. Rym Tech promised to invest the equity in their homes in "low-risk" ventures, like apartment conversions in New York and China. Those returns would, in theory, cover fees and back mortgage payments.

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