Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Two men arrested in alleged mortgage payment scam

Two Las Vegas men were arrested Thursday for allegedly operating a scam to steal mortgage payments from homeowners, Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto said.

Authorities allege that Joseph Yorkus, 49, and James Bartczak, 48, set up Great Western Business Services to steal homeowners’ mortgage payments by fraudulently claiming the mortgage holder’s loan servicer had changed. This would potentially result in putting the victims in default with their actual mortgage servicers.

“This type of corporate identity theft is devastating to the homeowner victim and to the true loan servicer, both of whom are harmed by these types of scams,” Masto said.

The alleged scam involved sending letters to homeowners falsely stating that servicing of the homeowners’ loans had been transferred from Bank of America to Great Western Business Services. The letters instructed homeowners to send their mortgage payments to Great Western Business Services instead of Bank of America.

As a result, victims missed mortgage payments to the true loan servicer that could result in a potential notice of default and foreclosure, officials said.

The case is being prosecuted by the attorney general’s Mortgage Fraud Task Force within the Bureau of Criminal Justice Fraud Division.

Anyone with information regarding the case should contact the attorney general’s office at 486-3194 in Las Vegas or 775-684-1180 in Carson City.

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