5 arrested in home-foreclosure con

35 homeowners, who were facing foreclosure, were conned into putting their homes in the hands of a third party.

Five people have been charged with defrauding Philadelphia area homeowners out of the equity in their homes.

Listen:
[audio: 091208tmfraud.mp3]

Michael Levy is United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He says 35 homeowners, who were facing foreclosure, were conned into putting their homes in the hands of a third party. Attorneys then siphoned the equity for their own personal profit.

Levy: At the end of all of this many of these mortgages went unpaid the straw purchases who had lent their names and good credit lost their credit and some of them lost their money many of the homeowners lost their homes. The only people that walked away with anything were these defendants who walked away with the money.

The homes were worth between $300,000 and $1.3 million dollars. Pennsylvania Secretary of Banking Steven Kaplan says the deal sounded too good to be true, and it was.