And Now Come the Bad Guys. Be on the Lookout. There will be Scammers Galore.

[stephendare]

Jackals.

They creep out in numbers whenever the times get rough.  Get used to this kind of story.  Its only the beginning of people making bucks off of the misery.

April Charney is an attorney for Legal Aid.  An amazing dedicated woman.  With extremely limited resources and more volunteers than staff, she has already become a national voice in this crisis.


http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/072708/met_310143581.shtml

It was 2006 and the foreclosure crisis was just forming in Jacksonville. But disaster had already struck for Lester Thomas and his wife, Phyllis.

First he had a stroke, then she did. Their income sank; bills piled up. As she languished in the hospital, he found out the bank was coming for their house, a three-bedroom on a tidy street on the Westside. The one Phyllis picked out.

Thomas Cuomo portrayed himself as their hero. They met for the first time at the hospital, Lester Thomas recalls.

Looking back on it now, he still can't believe how it all happened.

He isn't the only one.

Cuomo wasn't a white knight of the souring housing market, prosecutors and victims say. He was one of its villains.

Cuomo ran a private company, soliciting one desperate person after another and offering them help: The chance to sell him their homes and rent them back. Foreclosure Counselors Inc. is listed as a nonprofit with the Florida Division of Corporations, but not on the Internal Revenue Service's list of 501(c)3 charities.

Prosecutors say Cuomo bought homes, lied on mortgage applications to buy them, took what equity the former owner had built up, and then let the houses go into another foreclosure. In some cases he took out a second loan on the house, documents show. The State Attorney's Office has charged him with mortgage fraud and schemes to defraud.

Several victims come forward

Cuomo is a free man for now - his original $500,003 bail was reduced to $2,503 by Judge Mark Mahon. Some of his tenants are facing eviction by the banks foreclosing on Cuomo's defaulting loans.

Cuomo has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He could not be reached for comment; both home telephone numbers he listed on various documents have been disconnected. Mitchell Stone, his attorney, said Cuomo didn't lie on his loan applications and blames the banks.

In all, nearly a dozen people in Duval and Clay counties have spoken with authorities. The same story repeats itself in one affidavit after another:

Cuomo would buy their house, saving it from foreclosure, and rent it back to them for one year. Once they were on their feet, he would sell it back to them at the price he paid.

They would open a joint account with him at Vystar Credit Union, where they would deposit the rent.

At the closing, Cuomo demanded they turn over the proceeds of the sale - in some cases, $30,000 or more - on the spot to make repairs to the house. But the repairs were never made. And Cuomo let the mortgages he took out to buy the properties go into default.

"He knew my wife was in the hospital. It's hard to believe he did what he did," Thomas said. "I don't like to think about it."

Ties to Urban League

Foreclosure Counselors wasn't Cuomo's only business. He was also employed as a housing counselor at the Jacksonville Urban League, certified as a housing counseling agency by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Roland Wilson, human resources director for the Urban League, said the agency wasn't aware of what Cuomo was accused of doing. He hasn't worked there in over a year, Wilson said.

According to documents filed in the case, Cuomo did not represent himself as an employee of the Urban League. He said his own company could help.

Matthew Stewart, a Housing and Urban Development spokesman, said the agency was looking into the case, although he said he wasn't aware of the case until a Times-Union reporter asked about it.

"We would be concerned and interested in knowing the facts when it involves an employee of a HUD-certified agency," he said.

Banks get some of blame

Even if Cuomo's intentions were good, advocates wonder: How could he have borrowed money when, by authorities' accounts, his debt payments would have been $4,800 higher every month than his income?

The loans involved in the charges were second mortgages on the properties - homes investigators say Cuomo had already fraudulently applied for mortgages in the past. The second loans were obtained after Cuomo had been arrested in 2007 (on other charges that were later dropped), investigators said in the second arrest report.

April Charney, a foreclosure expert at Legal Aid and Lester Thomas' lawyer, said the banks are to blame, too.

That could bolster Cuomo's criminal defense.

His defense attorneys argued in a bond reduction motion that the banks, including Countrywide, inflated Cuomo's income figures.

"It's come to light that Countrywide and their agents and representatives were pretty lax about putting correct information on the applications they filled out," Stone, Cuomo's attorney, said. "Their agents were well aware of the true facts and changed them in order to put the mortgage through."

Bank representatives, including one from Countrywide, are scheduled to testify that they never would have given him the money had they known his true income.

Still, Charney doesn't doubt that Cuomo knew what he was doing. He was an expert in mortgages and foreclosure working as a housing counselor for the Urban League and, according to his resume, 13 years at HomeSide Lending.

Waiting for a homecoming

For now, Lester Thomas might be the lucky one.

While other victims have ultimately been evicted, Charney has challenged Cuomo's foreclosure on Thomas' behalf.

She believes his salvation could be the very cause of the mortgage collapse: Cuomo's loan was already in default when it was bundled with others and sold to securities. Often, in cases like this, no one can produce the original loan to prove who it belongs to. The trustee bank, Wells Fargo, has asked for an extension of time in the case.

And so Lester Thomas waits for a resolution. Mostly, though, he waits for his wife.

You see, he explains, he would have given up on the house if it wasn't for Phyllis. These days he's not there very often, spending every day and most of the night at the hospital by her side.

She was taken to hospice, but then sent back. It was not yet her time.

"I want it to be all ready for her to come home," Thomas said. "I want her to have her home to come home to."

deirdre.conner@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4504

[uptowngirl]

Back in 2002 (I believe or there about) FNMA was doing a program to loan money to people that were in CCCS believe it or not!