WARNING! HOMEOWNER SCAMMER ALERT – MY IDENTITY IS BEING USED ILLEGALLY

If someone has told you that I am involved in a loan modification law firm or any other type of operation, asking that you pay him or her money to get your loan modified, it is a SCAM.  They are using my name, showing you my blog and telling you how credible they are, but I don’t know who they are and have NOTHING to do with them.  

Please contact me right away at mandelman@mac.com, so we can put these criminals in jail.  

I have contacted the authorities including the Attorney General, District Attorney, and local police, and they understand the urgency.  These criminals will be caught and they will be punished… hopefully they will end up in jail.

Here’s what happened…

Yesterday I received an email from The Rip-Off Report, a site where consumers post complaints about being ripped off or defrauded opt whatever.  The message said that “my business had a complaint posted against it” or something like that.

I clicked on the link and for a moment could not believe what I was seeing.  It said:

Mandelman Inc. Realty Law Group; All State Law Group; My wife and I used $3500.00 from our IRA because they said they would represent us in a Loan Modification and they did nothing. We checked with the Bank for months they took our Money emailed us once Los Angeles, California

Now at first I thought it must just be a similar name sort of thing, but then I saw that the company’s information was as shown below.  None of the information was mine… EXCEPT THE WEBSITE, which IS my blog’s address.

Mandelman Inc.

18000 Studebaker Rd. Suite #700

Cerritos Ca. 90703

Los Angeles California 90703

United States of America

Phone: 949-600-9961

Web: mandelman.ml-implode.com/

I checked with the Secretary of State and there is no “Mandelman Inc.” registered in California.  And the address listed is a shopping center. Several people have tried to call the number and left messages saying they’re interested in learning more about their services in an effort to find out who they are and where they are.

Then I read the complaint and was horrified… 

My wife and I had been thinking for some time about how to get a better rate on our home loan. It occurred to us that a simple loan modification may be the answer. Since we had never done this before we believed the thing to do was to consult a legal professional or group.

 

We saw the advertisements on the Internet for Martin and his “associates”. We felt confident that they would be able to properly represent us to the Bank where we have our home loan.  It seemed appropriate to have a legal firm represent us even though we were not in foreclosure. Even I know you don’t have to be in financial trouble to have you loan refinanced or Modified.

 

When we made contact with the attorney (we thought) by filling out the online form, a man came to our business claiming to represent the firm in Los Angeles. He gave us a lengthy explanation about how credible they were and how well they did in the loan modification process. He assured us his “firm” would send us periodic updates and emails as to the status of our progress with the bank on a biweekly basis. He even went so far as to quote a “rate schedule” with a breakdown of payments and interest rates we would be paying if we allowed them to represent us in the modification.

 

To summarize the meeting he said in three months “after depositing $3500.00 with their firm” we would be down to paying $25.00 a month and would have had a counselor “a modification counselor” that is assigned to our case within the first 30 days.  The catch was we needed to be in default on our payments and we were not. His reaction was “well then there’s nothing we can do to help you” which if you have ever dealt with a modification is a complete lie; I just wish I had known it then (sigh).  Ironically even though we were not in default they accepted our money as a “retainer” and gave us no indication of how the funds were to be spent.

 

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This is horrific and makes me sick to my stomach.  If you who are scamming people using my name and my blog are reading this, STOP NOW.  I will have every law enforcement agency in the state looking for you by Monday.  And that’s only the beginning of my efforts to find you.

Mandelman out.