There’s
a grim new twist to the wave of foreclosures ripping through
Boston’s poorest neighborhoods.
It’s called the
“rescue scam.”
Hundreds of home and
condo owners in Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan and Hyde Park are
faced with losing their homes to foreclosure after signing on with
high-interest-rate lenders.
Now, a cottage
industry of shady small-time speculators has sprung up to target
these struggling homeowners, neighborhood activists report.
One popular tactic:
persuading a beleaguered homeowner faced with foreclosure to
“temporarily” sign over his home in exchange for financial
assistance. You can guess the rest.
Another ploy:
offering to make some phone calls - to pull a few strings - on
behalf of the homeowner with the lender. Of course, all that is
needed is a few thousand dollars up front.
This new scam has
caught the attention of Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office,
which has brought two rescue scammers to court and is exploring
additional cases. Coakley’s office is also researching legislation
to crack down on these scammers.
There are now dozens
of these “small-timer” operators in Boston and across Eastern
Massachusetts, authorities estimate.
The trend is also
troubling activists like Robert Pulster, executive director of ESAC,
a nonprofit Jamaica Plain agency that counsels homeowners in
trouble.
“They just become
like red meat to the sharks,” Pulster said. “They know they are
desperate and they are going to take advantage of it.”
Darlene Bowman can
vouch for that. The 64-year-old Dorchester social worker got a
firsthand look at this dark corner of the multibillion-dollar
mortgage business.
And it was an
experience she is not likely to forget soon.
Recovering from a
back operation, Bowman ran into financial difficulty last year when
she missed a payment on a $10,000 home-equity loan.
Her lender began
foreclosure proceedings, with the notice, as required by law,
published in the local newspapers. That seemingly obscure notice
triggered an avalanche of unwanted attention.
Before Bowman knew
it, her mailbox was being jammed full each day with dubious special
offers from various lenders to get her out of her foreclosure jam.
But the low point came when one purported savior took advantage of a
slightly ajar front door and strolled right into Bowman’s house.
With a bank robber’s
brazenness, he demanded $5,000 so he could “straighten” things out
with her lender.
Bowman said he
told her, “You have to talk to me. If you don’t, you are going to
lose your home.”
When she refused, he
went next door.
