One accept that both Buyers, Sellers and some Realtors are unaware of is the tax implication of doing such a thing. If the Realtor is under handedly giving money back, the Realtor must pay tax on those funds.

I was shocked when you indicated that the Realtor gave you lockbox codes. I would say that if indeed that was done, this was not a Realtor but an agent who is unaware of the legal implications of his actions. Reporting these acts is certainly justified and hopefully the agent will learn something from all this.

Thank you.

I am in the midst of being cheated by a dirty realtor. Fortunately, this only involves me and my realtor.

I was using Randy Gates from Keller Williams to sell my home in Michigan. We struck up a deal, where he would refund $3700 of my commision fee if I used him to buy a new home. We didn’t need a realtor. We could also bargain for better deals on the new construction that we were looking at without a realtor. However, we could use the money, so my wife and I agreed.

We found on our own all the homes we wanted to view. He just supplied us with the lockbox codes to enter, so he didn’t have to be there. This was fine with us, because we would recieve our refund after the purchase.

After signing the papers to purchase the home, we never recieved our agreed upon money. He will not answer his phone anymore or return any voicemails.

He just collected his extra cash and pushed us aside. We will probably never get the money, but we are in the process of reporting him and letting everyone know how crooked he is.

Thank you very much for one of the best articles we have seen published on mortgage fraud. We posted this story on our Mortgage Fraud Discussion Board: http://discussionboards.mortgagefraudqc.com/.

A similar thing happened to me in the mid-1990s by a company in Huntington Beach, Anastasi Realty and his brother who owned Anastasi construction. I was a single mother and making a very moderate income when I was coerced with promises of building my credit and hope of my own home ownership one day. After getting reeled in by promises of becoming a property owner (while renting myself), an intermediary orchestrated the loans on the homes that valued approximately $750k for the new construction town homes, back then!. There were first, second and Title 1 (or third) liens on the homes. Another co-worker was also in possession of three other units. After the simultaneous closings and the disbursement of all of the funds, of which I received nothing, the culprits pocketed close to two million dollars off of us. Within two months the “tenants” stopped paying the rents (one of the tenants was the individual who orchestrated the deals). When I began to inquire as the lender’s collection calls began, I was threatened with being turned into the FBI for my participation, and then my children were threatened and I left it alone.

This motivated my desire to learn more and I have had a career in fighting mortgage fraud for the past 10 years. If there is ever anything I can be of assistance with feel free to contact me. We welcome you to visit our Mortgage Fraud discussion board and encourage your readers to utilize our blog as well to share their similar experiences. The reason the criminals are allowed to continue is that their names and company information remain a secret until (and IF) there is a prosecution.

Please let your readers know they can openly share their stories so we can prevent other innocent people searching for the American Dream from having their lives destroyed.

Cindi Dixon, Director
Mortgage Fraud Investigations
Mela Capital Group
Cindi@MortgageFraudQC.com
http://ReportMortgageFraud.Org
http://discussionboards.mortgagefraudqc.com/

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