NEW YORK — The phone call came as Raymond Murray neared the bottom of his luck. His wife had died, his career had been ended by injuries, and struggling to get by on his disability check, he had scraped together just enough to pay a lawyer to avoid imminent foreclosure on his modest Brooklyn home.
The man on the phone offered a godsend: The foreclosure could be averted, the legal fees could be eliminated and the monthly mortgage payment he could no longer afford could be trimmed.
Soon, Murray was sitting at a conference room table in the man’s office, finalizing the fix he believed would keep him in his home. It didn’t take long for the sad truth to become clear: This aging immigrant was scammed out of his home.
Around the U.S., deed theft has emerged as one of the most sophisticated and devastating frauds ever to menace homeowners. Foreclosure “rescue” scams that have stolen thousands of dollars from individual homeowners in the years since the housing collapse have been pushed by savvy perpetrators to their limit. They use lies to convince the desperate to sign over their title, then force them into homelessness or a years-long legal battle.