Saul Cervantes received a letter in the mail that promised to get his bank to lower his monthly mortgage payment. The letter even indicated that the company spoke Spanish. Cervantes saw financial hardships coming, so this seemed to be a way to be proactive. To wait until he got behind on payments did not seem wise.

He called the number listed in the letter for the California company, Ideal Real Estate Solutions.

“The salesman made many promises. He said ‘the government has many programs to help lower payments. You can get them too,'” said Cervantes.

The man on the other end of the line seemed businesslike. The salesman asked Cervantes for copies of his paystubs and old tax returns. He told Cervantes that he had been preapproved for assistance by the company. They would start working on the case as soon as they received the first of two $1,500 payments.

After Ideal Real Estate cashed his second check, Cervantes called.  They told him they hadn't started on his case yet. Nervous, Cervantes next called the lending bank that held his mortgage.

“My bank said ‘that company can't do anything to lower your payments. Only we can do that',” Cervantes explained.

Angry, Cervantes called the company again.

“They promised they'd give me all but $500 back—they said they had paid that to a lawyer—if I put my request in writing. Then they stopped returning my phone calls. I still haven't gotten my money back,” Cervantes said.

Cervantes had several friends who knew of Help Now! through its recent work on the water filtration scam. Help Now!'s efforts there had resulted in a settlement with over $100,000 being paid back to more than 40 Latino families scammed locally and statewide.

“Working with our attorney partners, we were advised that the loan modification company was involved in deceptive trade practices under Oregon law. In Oregon , it is illegal to charge upfront fees for loan modification. Armed with this information, we contacted the California attorney who owned the loan modification company, Brian Columbana. After refusing to do anything initially, when confronted with his violation of Oregon law (Columbana was not licensed in Oregon ), Columbana agreed in writing to refund all of Saul's money by the end of April 2010.” said Dennis Goldstein, Help Now! senior advocate.

When that did not happen, Help Now! contacted the Oregon Department of Justice (DOJ).

“In the water filtration case, DOJ had received only one complaint. Our work on that matter provided DOJ a basis for going forward because of the number of victims we uncovered. With the loan modification scam, DOJ had already begun an investigation, and, by assisting Saul in filing a complaint with DOJ, he was able to add his name to the group of people for whom DOJ is pursuing restitution from Columbana,” said Larry Kahn, Help Now! Executive Director. “Developing a good relationship with DOJ, in particular their fraud and financial crimes unit, has been very helpful to our work on consumer scams. We have provided them information, and they, in turn, have provided us leverage on prospective defendants to hasten monetary settlement for our clients. They appreciate the work we do and have told us so.”

In the meantime and even before Help Now! could file a complaint with it on behalf of Saul, the California Bar Association had independently collected complaints about Columbana and his various real estate shell companies from eight other states as far away as South Carolina and New York. On June 17 of this year, Columbana was disbarred in California . The presiding judge wrote in his opinion that Columbana “poses a substantial threat of harm to his clients or to the public.”

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