Opinion ID: 2555874
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Mortgage Rescue Scam.

Text: As attributed to Respondent Philip Robinson, the mortgage rescue scam asserted in the underlying litigation was described as involving real-estate professionals (principally the Metropolitan Money Store enterprise) that: [T]arget[ed] homeowners who have thousands of dollars of equity in their homes, but who cannot keep up with their mortgage payments. These professionals promise[d] to rescue the homeowners from foreclosure by giving them a new mortgage with payments that they can afford. In reality, though, the scammers s[old] the property to a straw buyer, who then t[ook] out a new, larger mortgagea mortgage with fees that equal[ed] or exceed[ed] the amount of equity in the property. The lenders, title companies, and others involved in the transactions then split the fees (that is, the stripped equity) amongst themselves. The homeowners, who could not afford their original mortgage payments, ha[d] no hope of repaying the new, higher mortgage. Without settlement companies like Sussex, who closed the transactions between lenders, sellers, and straw buyers, the scam could not have succeeded.