National Freedom Group
Complaint 93315 Details

On December 28, 2011 my home phone rang and I answered it. It was a recorded message stating that President Obama had recently signed a bill of $75 million to help homeowners who are currently struggling with their homes. It stated that if you are: behind on payments, on an adjustable rate, upside down on your mortgage, or facing foreclosure please press option one. I pressed option one because we have an adjustable rate (which would be adjusting in April), we are very upside down due to the housing crisis and we were starting to struggle with making payments (because my husband works in sales and is commission only)we were current in payments at the time though. A lady instantly got on the line asked a few questions, stated she would pass our information on to an agent who would call right back. Within ten minutes a man by the name of Donald Young with National Freedom Group called me. He stated that they are a company who specializes in Loan Modifications and that what they do is get interest rate reductions as well as principal reductions on the mortgages. He stated that they work directly with the wholesale division of the lenders and work directly with the investors who actually hold the notes to our mortgages not the hourly paid people who cannot make the decisions. He asked for my email address to send me a package and also stated that with the permission of a previous client he would also be attaching a loan mod approval for what National Freedom Group had done for a previous client. He said that they get answers in 2-4 days not 3-6 months like it would take if we were to go through our lender on our own for a loan modification.
I looked this company up and could not find any negative stuff on them anywhere, so I figured they must be a legit company. We went ahead and filled out the paperwork which consisted of a hardship letter, monthly income, expenses etc. On January 5, 2012 he stated that we were approved for a loan mod and what our new payments would be and that our 1st mortgage company (Green Tree) would be reducing our principal balance by $70,245.38 (we owed $209,402.83 but now it would be $139,157.45) and our 2nd mortgage company would be reducing our principal balance by $18,092.98 (we owed $53,935.53 but now it would be $35,842.55) along with interest rate reductions as well. Their fees for this were $5495.00, but he had gotten us a Federal grant for $2600.00 (www.grants.gov) Home Saver so all he needed from us was $2895.00. These fees were for service costs which included legal and admin fees. We could only pay by money order, cashier check, personal check or certified check.
Our first estimated mortgage payments were to begin on April 6, 2012. My husband signed their contract on January 8, 2012 and we gave them 2 checks dated for 1/9/12 and 2/9/12 each for $1447.50 each. Donald Young informed us that we did not need to make payments to the mortgage companies while doing the loan mod if we could not afford to do so as they would not go toward the new payments and loan terms. He also stated that while we were in the loan modification process that by law the lenders could not take us to foreclosure, ignore the collection calls as that is just their job to threaten to collect money, he also stated that he had sent the lenders a cease and desist (do not contact letter), and for us to remove our numbers from contact with the lenders and just put his contact number instead, so that way the lenders would just call him instead, and that they could not report any derogatory things to the credit reporting agencies about us.

On January 26, 2012 Donald stated that the lenders were requesting certain documentation (banks statements, pay stubs, electric bill, and the declaration page for homeowner’s insurance. Every Tuesday Donald would call to give us updates which looking back now really were not updates at all. All he would ever say is that everything was great and that we should be seeing our new payment coupons roughly one month prior to the new payment date and that the docs would be coming as well and we would sign them then.
I started questioning him regarding why did our mortgage companies have no record that we were doing a loan mod if he was speaking with the wholesale department and he always said that not all departments always now what the other is doing. All he ever said what that the docs would be coming 30 days prior to the first payment date. The mortgage companies were calling us all day long relentlessly looking for payment and telling us that we had been scammed.
March 6, 2012 was the last time I have heard from Donald Young and I called him out and how I felt we had been scammed and that I wanted our money back. I explained that our mortgage company could file notice of default and start the foreclosure process and of course he said they could not and that he would check in with me again on the following Tuesday and acted like all was continuing on as planned. He has not returned any of my emails or phone messages.
I have been speaking with a girl by the name of Rachel who is in Customer Service who has picked up where he has left off saying all of the same things as Donald. I have demanded my money back and as of today no luck.
On March 19, 2012 I called my mortgage company Green Tree to pay January and February mortgage payments. I was excited when they took the payment. Later in the day my husband called to tell me he got a message from Stephen Michael at Green Tree that we needed to call him back. I called him back to be told that they could not accept my payments. He stated that we are in foreclosure status and a notice is going out in the mail the next day. In order for the foreclosure status to go away I would have to make 3 payments.
When I spoke to Rachel at National Freedom Group on March 20, 2012 about this she said she was sorry but that they cannot do that but, it can be part of the process at times and she knows that they faxed paperwork to my lender. I would find out that they altered the numbers that we provided to them (our monthly income, our outgoing bills etc). We had to fill out forms with this info and then they transpired the numbers to some other form and submitted this info along with our required docs to our lender.
On March 20,2012 I filed a complaint with the BBB in California (Report # 98678783), the FTC (Reference # 36055825), the AG in California (PIU # 467606), I closed my checking account down and open a new one (my bank cannot help me get my money back), put a fraud alert on our credit report, contacted grants.gov to find out there was never a grant given on our behalf, filed a complaint report on ripoffreport.com and will contact news media and anyone else I can think of as well. Also have found that they operated under a different name prior to this company called Home Care Alliance where they pulled the same scam as well. This company has taken our money and has done nothing but given us bad information and gotten us into foreclosure.