Revere lawyer to pay $625G for misleading ads

[unhappycamper]

http://www.bostonherald.com/business/business_markets/2015/08/revere_lawyer_to_pay_625g_for_misleading_ads

Revere lawyer to pay $625G for misleading ads
Saturday, August 8, 2015
Donna Goodison

A Suffolk Superior Court judge ordered a Revere attorney to pay $625,000-plus in penalties and restitution for using misleading radio ads to target struggling Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking homeowners facing foreclosure and charging them thousands of dollars in illegal up-front fees for undelivered services.

Judge Paul Wilson found that David Zak and his businesses, Zak Law Offices P.C, and Loan Modification Group Inc., preyed on vulnerable homeowners by making deceptive guarantees that their mortgage loans could be modified to prevent foreclosures.

The state attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit against Zak in 2011 after 65 former clients filed complaints about his business practices. The judgment includes $157,000 for those clients.

“At a time when homeowners were struggling to afford their mortgages, this attorney abused his clients’ trust and deliberately exploited their financial circumstances by demanding exorbitant fees based on false promises, leaving these homeowners even more vulnerable,” Attorney General Maura Healey said in a statement.

[Live and Learn]

1. This seems so commonplace today that I find it

almost hypocritical to find one company guilty of such.

[merrily]

2. If you hold someone liable, the news reports about the fine may at least scare others.

If you hold no one liable, you may as well send crooked lawyers a registered letter saying they have a license to do this.

In the shoes of the judge, I may have imposed a jail sentence, if the law allowed me to do that. If the law did not allow me to do that, I would have noted that omission in my opinion and urged the legislature to change the law.

I hope the lawyers directly involved at least got disbarred or suspended, too. If not, why the hell not?

Some crooks in all fields, like corporations, view a fine simply as a cost of doing a very profitable business. I knew someone who operated that way as far as lawsuits. He'd screw people, knowing he was giving them grounds to sue. He figured either they would not sue at all or he could settle the suit for half the money involved. Either way, he'd net more money than if he did not screw people.