NY man admits to $568K mortgage modification scam

Mark Savransky faces up to six years in prison

NY man admits to $568K mortgage modification scam

A New York man has admitted to a mortgage modification scheme that scammed approximately $568,000 from 32 homeowners, according to District Attorney Madeline Singas of Nassau County on Long Island.

Mark Savransky pleaded guilty before Supervising Judge Teresa Corrigan and faces one to six years in prison when he is sentenced on Jan. 10.

According to Singas, Savransky ran a mortgage modification business, the clients of which were typically residential homeowners who had purchased their homes using a subprime adjustable-rate mortgage sometime between 2006 and 2009.

When the payments became unaffordable, the homeowners hired Savransky to assist in obtaining a mortgage modification. Between 2008 and 2014, he promised 32 homeowners that after securing modifications, he would hold their mortgage payments in trust and forward them to the financial institutions servicing the mortgages.

At the defendant’s request, the payments were mostly made in cash or by check that did not include the payee. Savransky later completed the payee portion of the check, thereby giving him the means to misappropriate the funds.

Because the mortgage payments weren’t made, lenders started to foreclose on the properties belonging to the defendant’s clients. When some of the homeowners complained to him, some of them received a limited amount of repayment.

“This defendant preyed on vulnerable homeowners during the height of the mortgage crisis and swindled them out of more than a half million dollars,” Singas said. “In many cases, homeowners didn’t know they were in trouble until lenders started foreclosing on their homes.”

 

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