A few months ago while watching TV my husband saw a commercial of a lawyer that does Loan Modifications. We contacted this law firm Advocate Law Groups of Florida, P.A. And they gave us an appointment to one of their fly by night offices located in Orlando, Florida. We had the appointment with one of their representatives Jane Pena - and she explained to us that she represents the main lawyer called Jon B. Lindeman, Jr. She explained to us that Mr. Lindeman opened his own office because he wanted to fight against the banks to do loan modifications. <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal">
<p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal">In order for us to be able to hire such law firm we had to give a deposit of $3,400.00 upfront signing a non-refundable agreement and also authorizing Advocate Law Groups of Florida, P.A. To deduct on a monthly basis an amount of $595.00 from our checking account to cover their fees. Supposedly the loan modification was going to take anywhere from 3 to 7 months and we were told that we had to fall back in our mortgage payments so that they can contact our loan company to make the modification. A couple of months passed and we received a package of about 30 pages of documents that supposedly were sent to the loan company to do a loan modification for us.in that paperwork there was a letter directed to the 3 credit bureaus stating not to put us in collections because of the late payments on this property, because we were in litigation doing a loan modification. All these documents were NEVER sent to the loan company and the letter to the credit bureaus also was never mailed or sent to them. <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal">After 4 months of not hearing any news from our supposedly Negotiator called Adrian Rodriguez we tried contacting him always getting an answering service operator and having to leave a message for him to call us back. (A law firm with an answering service FIRST RED FLAG!) Our Negotiator Adrian Rodriguez would return our calls within a few days if we were lucky. He always would tell us to not contact your loan company or answer any mail that we might receive from them because WE are taking care of it (SECOND RED FLAG). <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal">After 4 months of receiving a letter from a collection company stating that we where already late in our monthly payments and possibly going into foreclosure we contacted the collection company directly stating that we have a lawyer in charged of the loan modification. This collection company informs us that nobody has contacted them at anytime. We immediately called our supposedly negotiator Adrian Rodriguez and questioned what was going on. We got the following answer from him WHY DID YOU CONTACT THEM DIRECTLY? YOU WERE TOLD THAT WE WERE TAKING CARE OF IT. We also asked Mr. Rodriguez that we wanted to speak DIRECTLY with the main lawyer Jon B. Lindeman Jr. And he refused to give us his number or where he could be reached at. We tried on our own means of trying to contact him but he was no where to be found. <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal">We immediately contacted our bank to stop the monthly payments to this company Advocate Law Group of Florida and filed a chargeback with the bank. Unfortunately, the bank couldnt return our funds because of the agreement that we signed with them (on a non-refundable basis). As soon as Advocate Law Groups of Florida noticed that we stopped payment on their monthly fees they sent us an invoice for unpaid fees of an amount three times higher than what the payment was. <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal">They have small offices (fly by night locations) in Orlando, Miami, Palm Beach, Tampa, Ft. Lauderdale, Naples and Jacksonville that we know of. They also are listed with an F rating in the Better Business Bureau website. <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal">Not only they have charged us more than $5,500.00, but now we are losing the property and our credit is totally ruined because of them. For us to try to save our property from going into foreclosure we must pay $7,700.00 (money that we dont have) to the collection company. <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal">We have learned our lesson. Be aware of these SCAMMERS and do not hire them and NEVER sign a document that is done on a Non-Refundable Basis.
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