Some mortgage villains faring quite well

Filed in archive mortgage news on July 20, 2009

We like to see justice done, don't we? We want to see our villains caught, given a fair trial and locked away. We like the thought of Bernie Madoff in jail for the rest of his life.

Unfortunately, we don't always get justice. And this seems to be especially true in the mortgage-lending business.

It's clear that a big reason for the country's current economic mess are all the housing foreclosures taking place across the nation. And why are so many people unable to pay their monthly mortgage loans? It's because so many mortgage loan officers — paid, by the way, to watch out for their clients — steered them toward risky interest-only or adjustable-rate mortgages. When these mortgages adjusted, too many homeowners could not afford the new higher monthly payments. They also couldn't refinance into a more conservative mortgage loan because their homes had lost value.

Unfortunately, many of the shady loan officers who made these bad loans haven't suffered a bit. They made their money and then got out of the industry.

And some not only made their money, they're still making money, this time thanks to the misfortunes of homeowners.

One of these sharks is Jack Soussana. He's a mortgage loan officer who admits that he set many of his clients up with mortgage loans that later blew up in their faces. So what's he doing now? He's working for a loan-modification company, where he tries to help homeowners struggling to make their mortgage payments. You can read about this in this New York Times story.

According to the story, for fees sometimes reaching more than $3,400, clients work with Soussana and his fellow counselors to negotiate with mortgage lenders. The goal is to reduce the monthly mortgage payments homeowners face.

Soussana is far from alone. Many of the people who passed out risky mortgages are now working to help homeowners deal with the repercussions of these loans.

Yes, it does sound kind of lousy, doesn't it? Like I said, we like to see justice done. We don't like to see the crooks get even greater rewards.