My husband and I were looking for a refinancing on our house. At the time, we were considered "high risk" customers and were working with a mortgage broker recommended to us by HUD.
Our broker put us in touch with another "brokerage, " Mortgage Innovations, LLC, out of Lakeville, MN. This company offered us a "unique opportunity" to refinance with an "investor" whom they wouldn't identify. This investor would buy our home from us and sell it back by having us make the mortgage payments. Of course, we wouldn't be the actual owners of the home anymore.
All that said, we were not actually ripped off. This is due to the fact that we recognized what they were doing for what it actually was — "legal" equity stripping. It was legal only in the fact that they were telling us exactly what they were doing, they just weren't using the phrase "equity stripping."
They claimed that this was the only way possible for us to save our home.
AND to top off the entire unpleasant experience, when we concluded our meeting with him, he started spouting religion and handing us MULTIPLE copies of "The Watchtower." Personally, I could care less about a person's religious beliefs and it's ok with me for people to have other beliefs than mine, BUT there is a time for evangelizing and there is a time to keep your holy-roller mouth shut. During a refi meeting is one of those time to shut your piehole!
Interestingly enough... The next day I contacted the broker with whom I was originally working and told him what Mortgag Innovations tried to do to us. He emphatically stated that that is not what he had discussed with them and that he would make it right by us. We never heard from him again... When I contacted the brokerage for whom he worked, he had walked out that very same day.
Both companies were reported to the FTC and the BBB, to no avail. As no actual ripoff was committed, there was nothing either agency could do.
My only recourse (or whatever you want to call it) is to inform as many people as possible about the shady practices that they are guilty of to keep the same thing from happening to someone else.
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