Woman says ray of hope was trick
She paid for help with her mortgage. The company that she says misled her is one being sued by the state.
A medical crisis and a subprime loan had worked to destroy Juanita Campbell's home-ownership dreams.
But the alleged scam artist who came calling at her most vulnerable moment was worse, in a way, because he schemed to "build up your hopes," she said.
Campbell, 50, concedes now that the no-income-verification mortgage, which she got from Countrywide Financial in 2005 as a first-time home buyer in Linden, Union County, wasn't the best deal to begin with.
"I was excited. I was a little stupid. I shouldn't have accepted the loan, but what did I know?" she said. "You're thinking, 'Wow, no more rent.' "
When monthly mortgage payments jumped from $2,500 to $3,700 in November 2007 - for a reason Campbell still doesn't completely understand - the financial hit coincided with her fiance's falling sick.
As Campbell's fiance went on dialysis and stopped working, her salary as a secretary at a law firm couldn't cover the payments.
Her house, which she still lives in, is in foreclosure. She hasn't made a mortgage payment in more than a year.
But in August, there was a glimmer of hope. After putting her name into some Web sites purporting to help people with mortgages, Campbell got a call from a man who said he was confident he could help.
"He said he used to work for Countrywide and he would be very successful in getting me a modification on my loan," she said. "He pretty much guaranteed it. He said, 'If we don't get this done, you get all your money back.' "
The man allegedly was part of an outfit called Hope Now Financial Services, which has been accused of making false promises and violating state advertising regulations. Its Web site was "designed to deceive consumers" into believing it was affiliated with a nonprofit organization that provides foreclosure-prevention services, according to the New Jersey Attorney General's Office.
In a lawsuit filed in Superior Court in Camden County yesterday, the state alleges that Hope Now charged consumers thousands of dollars for loan-modification services that it never provided.
Convinced that the man from Hope Now would persuade Countrywide to lower her payments, Campbell agreed to wire him $1,000 to start the process. She said she would give him the remaining $1,500 that he asked for at the end of the month.
"Four days after I gave him the $1,000, he called me up and said, 'I got you a great modification [to the loan] with a lower interest rate,' " she said.
"I said, 'Really?' He said, 'Yeah, but you've got to give me the balance of the money today.' "
She asked for specifics, but he said he couldn't tell her anything until he had the money. She sent him $500.
And she never heard from him again.
The people who answered his phone said he'd had a heart attack and no longer worked there. Another woman she'd had contact with at Hope Now went on a vacation that seemed to last weeks on end.
A call to Hope Now yesterday yielded a recorded message that billed the company as the "nation's largest premier loan-modification center." An operator who then answered the phone said the company had no comment.
Campbell got $1,000 of her $1,500 back, but she wrote a letter to the Better Business Bureau anyway. The Attorney General's Office then contacted her.
"I was just so surprised. I thought it was a legitimate outfit," she said. "They had a Web site and everything. . . . Who knew?"
Campbell is struggling to get Countrywide to adjust her interest rate so she can stay in her house. The company, now owned by Bank Of America, is offering her a mortgage rate between 9 and 11.5 percent, she said.
Since the mortgage crisis came to light, banks said, they have been working with homeowners who have risky loans. Countrywide did not return a call for comment.
"Whatever programs they started, Juanita Campbell is not on it," Campbell said. "I'm really coming to the end of the race where I'm ready to give up."