Foreclosure Law Group
July 17th, 2007
Foreclosure Law Group
Question: Has anyone been affected by the cease and desist order on Lucas Law Group by the CA Attorney General?Now what?
I retained Attorney Paul Lucas to do a Loan Modification, both on my 1st and HELOC with Wells Fargo. The FTC and CA Attorney General Brown filed a "cease and desist" order against Lucas and 21 other So. CA attorneys doing Loan Modifications, effectively putting them out of business. Now I am trying to find other "victims" to find out what our options are. I'm worried about foreclosure, but I understand there is a new CA law providing a temporary hold on foreclosures, but I'm not sure when this will end. As I see it, my options are to (1) wait it out to see if Lucas is allowed to resume pursuing Loan Mods, (2) exercise my "out clause" to try and get a refund of the $2,000. fee I have already paid (3) hire another attorney to get my $2,000. back, perhaps an ACLU attorney pro bono (4) hire another attorney to do the Loan Mod for me, provided I can get my $2,000. back. Is anyone affected by this cease and desist order and what do you plan to do?
Thank,
BEGERT
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Answer: This really bothers the heck out of me. There are hundreds of con artists across the country who will take your last few thousand dollars, promising a loan modification and then you get zip.
In some cases, they don't even try. In others, they file bogus lawsuits claiming technical items in your original loan documents make the loan invalid.
The sad truth is that most people who are in danger of foreclosure cannot qualify for refinancing and should be looking to sell the property. Using your mortgage money to pay a "foreclosure consultant" will only make matters worse. Even if Lucas is able to resume business, I doubt that they will do anything for you.
What to do? Well, the FTC is trying to get your refund for you. That will take quite a while. You can exercise your "out clause", but according to the FTC complaint, Lucas is unlikely to pay you anything. Hiring an attorney to get $2000 is not cost effective, but you can file a small claims action yourself and demand your refund. (An ACLU lawyer won't take this - it is not a constitutional issue.)
You don't need to pay a lawyer or anyone else to do a loan modification for you. You can contact Wells Fargo yourself and they will give it to you straight: if you have sufficient equity, you can refinance. If you have no equity, the best you can do is a negative amortization loan that will lower your payments today and hope to refinance if the market ever turns. But you need A-1 credit to get that done.
Other than that, there are very few real options out there. I know that is not what you want to hear, but at least you didn't have to pay me $2,000 to hear it.
United Law Group - Complaint Retraction: John Wright
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