My story is similar to those told before.
My wife and I have several rental properties. Some are upside-down in this economy and I have been actively trying to refinance them or get the mortgage companies to do a loan modification. I have been very unsuccessful in my endeavors. We recently went through all the paperwork for one of our properties to obtain a loan modification directly with the mortgage company. After several months of working with them we were turned down. We were told that we should try using one of the loan modification programs that have lawyers to help push the paperwork through. They know how to get it through the process. About this time we came in contact with United Services Group (USG) which was the beginning of October.
We had them give us an estimate on what they could do on three of our most problematic properties. They are upside-down, have high interest and are interest only loans. I went online and checked them out. Their web site looked professional. They had sample loan modifications that were comparable to the estimates they gave to us. I checked with the BBB and they had no complaints on them at the time. The estimates were comparable to those advertized on TV and radio. If they could do this it would improve our cash flow by $1000/mo. I shared it with a mortgage broker who I had worked with. He could not do conventional refinance loans for me because of the upside-down properties made our debt ratio too high; another reason why the loan modification program looked very attractive. He said he has heard of these programs. He did not have access to them. He said I should be able to do it myself. He said it looks great on paper, but I should be careful and should just do one property to see how it works before modifying the others. After spending over a week thinking it over and researching it, we decided to go forward with the loan modifications.
We sent in our paperwork on October 12. At first I was only going to do one property. They talked me into doing all three by offering a discount and charging only $3,500 per property for a total of $10,500. Otherwise it was $4,500 per property. I would be saving $3,000. They also divided the payments into three installments to make it slightly easier. The first installment was $4,500 which was due on Oct 17. Within a week we received letters from all three mortgage companies stating that they had been contacted by USG. I felt like they were moving ahead quickly.
On Nov 9 I received an e-mail from USG stating that the loan paperwork for the loans were in underwriting. I also had received phone calls with updates. So, I was more than willing to pay the next installment of $3,750 on Nov 17.
I received at least two phone calls with updates from USG, and a letter reminding me to pay the last installment. I was told that I should expect the loans to be completed sometime in January. I paid the last installment of $2250 on Dec 17.
The next call that I remember was just after New Years. They asked for updated paystubs for my wife and me. We Faxed that in on Jan 9.
The updates became fewer after that. The next call I remember was from a Devonne stating she was from Advanced Loan Processing and that she now had our loan paperwork. This was around the end of January or the First of February. She gave me her phone number which was 619-567-7233. She said that USG was overwhelmed with loans and had transferred about 400 of them to Advanced Loan Processing to help close them out. She said in the next couple of days she would e-mail me a list of contacts of the people who would be working on my loans. After about two weeks I realized that I had not received the list and no one had called me back. I called the number she gave me and left about 4 or 5 messages over the next week or so. Her message changed and said to call a different number, a 619-609-0085. That message said they would return my call within 48 hours. I left 3 messages over a week time. I also started calling the numbers I had for USG. I could not get a hold of anyone there either and left messages as well. I tried the USG website this week and it is no longer there.
We are now worried about identity theft from those that worked at USG and Advanced Loan Processing. The letter we signed and USG sent to the mortgage companies gave them access to all the mortgage information and to act in our behalf. We called one of our mortgage companies today to see about not allowing them access to our account any more. It turns out the only contact USG made with our mortgage company was the submission of the letter. The mortgage company knows nothing about a loan modification request. We suspect the other two mortgage companies will have the same response. They also have bank statements and our SSN’s. If they scammed us for this cash, what would stop them from ID theft? I have an ID protection program. My wife does not, so we plan to alert the credit bureaus.
These people need to be found and our paperwork recovered or destroyed. I know I will not be able to sleep well until they are caught and my paperwork is recovered. That information can easily be sold. I would also like to see if I can get some of our money back. Where do we go from here?
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