If they want to be taken seriously as a profession, they should stop acting like used car salesmen. But it's part of the attitude about white-collar crime in this country, that it's not really a crime. It's like burping at the table or something. In the end, borrowers wind up holding the bag. But at closing, she discovered her loan carried a 13.7 percent interest rate and that closing costs ate up almost 10 percent of the loan total.
Most borrowers pay only a few percentage points in costs on their loans.
But the brokers wouldn't let her pick up her check for the proceeds until after the three-day period allowed by federal law in which to change your mind about a loan had passed, she contends in a pending lawsuit. Her brokers, she charged, had pocketed the rest. Sims pawned her car and took a part-time night job at a bank encoding checks, in addition to her job at Home Depot, to pay for the contractors and for other bills, including property taxes. It wasn't enough. She lost her car, and has had to borrow money from friends and relatives to keep up with her house payments and to care for her young son and elderly mother.