“CARES-Act Homeowner Assistance Fund or Lender Specific In-house Mortgage Adjustment Program”
Here's a fact scammers hope you never learn: every real government program for struggling homeowners is free to apply for.
HUD-approved counseling? Free. Your servicer's hardship review? Free. Government homeowner assistance programs? Applying was always free — and where a program still operates, it still is.
The phantom help scam puts a toll booth on that free road. It dresses up as a government program — fake seals, official-sounding names — and charges you to "enroll," "process," or "qualify." Sometimes it goes further and takes your mortgage payments themselves.
This is real language from government enforcement files:
A letter saying you're eligible for a rate reduction through a "CARES-Act Homeowner Assistance Fund or Lender Specific In-house Mortgage Adjustment Program" — with a specific new rate and payment listed, and a number to call. Callers were told they had a "grace period" and didn't need to pay their mortgage.
A mailer with what looked like an official government seal, announcing your eligibility for a "New 2014 Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP 2)."
Phone reps quoting "phony approval codes," fictitious new mortgage terms, a "98 percent past success rate" — and claiming to be "underwriters" affiliated with your mortgage company.
Notice the pattern. Specific numbers. Official words. Confidence. That's the costume.
Step one: government-flavored bait. A mailer, robocall, or website mimicking a federal program. Fake seals. Agency-sounding names that end in .com instead of .gov. Some clone real nonprofits — one outfit copied the letters of the legitimate HOPE NOW alliance, and a couple paid the clone $4,000.
Step two: the toll. You "qualify" for the program — but they must "process" or "enroll" you, for a fee. Usually a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars. The thing they're selling — a HUD counseling session, an assistance fund application, your servicer's hardship packet — is free.
Step three: the fake approval. You're told you're "preliminarily approved." It feels like relief. It's bait for step four.
Step four — the cruelest version: diverted trial payments. Real modifications often start with three monthly trial payments. Scammers copy that. They tell you you're approved at a new low rate and to send your trial payments to them. Your lender never sees a cent. Your loan sinks deeper into default while you believe you're saving your home.
Step five: the loss. The fee is gone. The "trial payments" are gone. The foreclosure never stopped. And because you were told you had a "grace period," you're months further behind than when you started.
An outfit calling itself "HOPE Services" — also operating as "HouseHoldRelief" — picked its name carefully. It collides with the Homeowner's HOPE Hotline, the real, free, HUD-approved national helpline.
HOPE Services mailed homeowners pieces with what looked like an official government seal, announcing they were eligible for a "New 2014 Home Affordable Modification Program." It claimed special contacts inside lenders and a high success rate — even for people who'd already been denied.
The price of this "free government program": a $400 to $900 upfront fee. Then came the trial payments. Homeowners sent monthly mortgage payments to HOPE Services, believing they were in an approved modification. The lenders never received the funds.
Total taken: more than $3 million. The FTC sued in 2015 and a court shut the operation down. The painful coda: in January 2025, the FTC mailed the refunds it could recover — 198 checks totaling just over $49,000. About $251 per victim. Once the money's gone, it's mostly gone.
And the scam never died. In June 2026 the FTC sued National Amendment Assistance, run by Marinus Pieter Van Zweeden, Martin Howard Rub, and Susan Jane Bustamante — the operation behind those fake "CARES-Act Homeowner Assistance Fund" letters. A federal court has already frozen the operation while the case proceeds.
Get the real free help. Call the actual Homeowner's HOPE Hotline: 888-995-HOPE (4673) — free, 24/7, HUD-approved. Or find a HUD-approved counselor through HUD directly at 800-569-4287. These are the people the scammers imitate.
Call your servicer's loss mitigation department. If a letter claims you qualify for a program, call your servicer at the number on your monthly statement — not the number in the letter — and ask. If the servicer's never heard of it, you've just unmasked the scam. (Letters that perfectly imitate your servicer are their own trap — see the impersonator guide.)
Know your free federal rights. Under 12 CFR §1024.41 — a federal rule that can pause your foreclosure when you file a complete application for help — your servicer must review your complete application for every available option if it's in more than 37 days before the sale. That protection is built into the law. It costs nothing.
Never redirect a mortgage payment. No real program, government or private, asks you to pay anyone but your servicer.
Report it. FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, plus your state Attorney General. Your report is how the next family gets warned.
Colorado: Charging upfront fees for foreclosure rescue or loan modification services is illegal under the Colorado Foreclosure Protection Act. Free help: Colorado Foreclosure Hotline, 1-877-601-HOPE (4673). Report fraud to the AG's Mortgage Fraud Information Center: 800-222-4500.
Arizona: Free help through the Arizona Foreclosure Helpline, 1-877-448-1211 (Arizona Department of Housing). State law also bans consultant fees before all services are fully performed.
California: Civil Code §2944.7 bans advance fees for loan modification help — including from attorneys. No "law firm" framing gets around it.
Nevada: Anyone offering loan modification or foreclosure consulting must be licensed by the Nevada Division of Mortgage Lending. Owner-occupants can also request free state-run foreclosure mediation through Home Means Nevada after a notice of default.
Florida: Fla. Stat. §501.1377 bans any payment before all promised services are done and gives you a non-waivable 3-business-day cancellation right. Report scams to the FL AG: 1-866-9-NO-SCAM.
This guide is educational information, not legal advice. For advice about your specific case, talk to a HUD-approved housing counselor (free) or a licensed attorney.
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