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Scams costing victims their homes
Foreclosure 'rescue' plans proliferating
W scams
Alexandria Casperson, Department Executive, Wayne County Mortgage and Deed Fraud Task Force visits houses in Detroit. The task force has an eight-person "war room" dedicated to fighting deed theft, with representatives of his office working alongside prosecutors and deputies. They've raised awareness for police more used to dealing with stolen purses or cars. - photo by Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — 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 voice on the line offered a godsend: No more attorney fees, no more foreclosure, a lower monthly mortgage, and all this help for free.Murray was soon picked up by a black Mercedes-Benz, off to meet the man on the phone. Not long after, he was back at the office again, property deed in hand and a ring of people around a conference room table, finalizing the supposed fix to keep him in the home he hoped to die in.Eventually, the blessing Murray thought he had found was revealed as a curse.
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