Federal agents recently busted four men who worked at telemarketing “boiler rooms” that pitched loan modification services to distressed homeowners out of companies with various names in Irvine, Santa Ana, Newport Beach, Garden Grove and Westminster from late 2008 to early 2010.
Charged in a 33-count indictment that includes allegations of mail fraud and wire fraud and, in one case, money laundering were: business owner and principal Aminullah Sarpas (who also used the names Amin Sarpas and David Sarpas), 32, of Irvine; salesman Samuel Paul Bain (who also used the name Paul Bain), 35, of Tustin; principal sales manager Damon Grant Carriger, 36, of Corona; and manager and chief accountant Louis Saggiani, 64, of Huntington Beach.
All have been arraigned at the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
According to a recent federal indictment, the loan-modification programs offered by the defendants to financially distressed homeowners were bogus. Greenleaf Modify, U.S. Homeowners Relief, Waypoint Law Group and the American Lending Review were among the company names they used, according to the U.S. Attorney.
Homeowners were charged advance fees ranging from $1,450 to about $4,200 for loan modifications that were promised to lower monthly mortgage payments and interest rates to as low as 2 percent, according to the feds, who added that some consumers were also promised their up-front money would be refunded if the loan mods did not materialize.
When one company the telemarketers were associated with received too many complaints of doing no loan-mod work and/or failing to pony up refunds, it would be shut down and reopened under a new name, according to the government.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
This should have a follow up, as your facts are inaccurate, going off of an indictment isn’t reporting the news… it’s a biased misrepresentation! Putting false information out is harmful to innocent people!
It’s funny how people out that haven’t been scammed out of anything react about an indictment now if you read what they were actually charged and convicted of how do you feel maybe if you were one of the people they got scammed out of $5000 you’d feel different
Please get your facts straight, I’d be happy to help you with that; in light of my recent Not Guilty verdict. You could actually write quite a few articles that range from Government overreach, to the actual real costs of being an innocent man whose rights were nearly trampled by the Government. Please contact me if you are a “truth seeker.”
Damon
Maybe if you look at the whole fax and now look at see what they were actually convicted of sentencing is coming in September maybe you should see how longThese assholes are going to be put away for doing exactly what they shouldn’t have is stealing from people that really needed help