Beware Mortgage Elimination Schemes

I don’t know why home business opportunity fans are prey to these financial schemes but one making the rounds is about “Mortgage Elimination”.

Listen, there’s no legal way to “eliminate a mortgage” that doesn’t involve paying it off.

There are legitimate “debt elimination” programs which involve paying off debts including mortgages using accelerated payments and such plans are being sold by commissioned sales agents and they involve monthly bank drafts, paying off the smaller bills first, then “snowballing” the funds to pay bigger bills, etc.

I’m talking about schemes which purportedly tell you how to eliminate your mortgage without paying another payment at all – even if you have 29 years and 11 months left on a 30 year mortgage.

Marily Barnewall clues us in on what’s going on. In fact the Federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has issued a bulletin for bankers that you ought to know about before you pay to “eliminate your mortgage”.

They’re based on technicalities that are pure sophistry but suck in the unwary and people wanting to “stick it the bank” by not paying off their home loan.

The bulletin reads…

“Please be advised that worthless instruments entitled ‘Bond for Discharge of Debt,’ ‘Bill of Exchange,’ ‘Due Bill,’ ‘Redemption Certificate,’ or other similarly titled documents continue to be presented to financial institutions, mortgage companies, credit card issuers, and retail establishments throughout the United States in an effort to eliminate legitimate debts. Many of these schemes are premised on baseless or fraudulent claims against the United States Treasury, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Internal Revenue Service, or other federal or state agencies.� (See also OCC Alert 2003-7 and OCC Alert 99-10).

So, unless you want to lose the money you spend on these worthless programs, lose your home AND be prosecuted for fraud, please think twice before believing your mortgage can be made to disapper instantly without paying off the debt you’ve agreed to pay.