Local minister's prayer led to expensive lesson in foreclosure scams

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The tide of complaints about so-called foreclosure rescue scams coming into Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray’s office has been steadily building. They've received 124 complaints so far this year.

By Ken McCall, Staff Writer Updated 12:40 PM Sunday, June 7, 2009

When Rev. Willie Marshall got a call in February offering him a way out of his mortgage problems, he thought he’d received an answer to prayer.

Instead, the 74-year-old minister of Zebulon Missionary Baptist Church on Gennessee Avenue in Dayton now says he was taken by a scam.

Marshall was called by a representative from a California-based company, who promised to help him reduce his $720-a-month mortgage payments. All Marshall had to do was stop paying his mortgage company and give the monthly checks to a local representative of the California company.

“He showed me how I could get a new mortgage on my property, and it would cost me $238 a month,” Marshall said from his three-bedroom home on West Riverview Avenue. “How would you like that? Well I jumped for it.”

Now $1,400 poorer, Marshall is delinquent on his loan, has gotten threatening letters from a debt collection firm and could get a foreclosure notice any day on the home he’s lived in since 1977.

Experts say stories like Marshall’s are playing out with increasing frequency as the national mortgage foreclosure crisis worsens.

And the tide of complaints about such so-called foreclosure rescue scams coming into Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray’s office has been steadily building. Through the first five months of this year, Cordray’s office received 124 complaints — just six fewer than they received all of last year.

“You pay money, you don’t get any service and you end up either sooner or later losing your home,” Cordray said. “If people are asking for money up front, be very skeptical.”

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