MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Days after crooks tried to steal a Munford woman’s home, a Mississippi man warned he lost $3,000 in a mortgage scam.
“I’m thinking all of this is 100% legit,” the Lafayette County man explained. “But it was not.”
Harry Smith told FOX13 he wanted to lower his monthly mortgage payment.
He received an unsolicited call from what he thought was his PHH Mortgage. The person on the other end of the line had very specific instructions on where to send the money.
“He told me to take cash money and take it to Walmart,” Smith explained. “He sent me the barcode on my phone.”
However, Smith said his mortgage company never got the money.
He believes he unknowingly sent it to a scammer.
“I said, ‘How did they get my information?’” he wondered.
Smith reached out to FOX13 after hearing what happened to Merle Ballard.
“It could do a lot of damage to a lot of people,” Ballard warned on Friday.
The Munford homeowner warned she had received an email that looked like an official PHH Mortgage document. The email had the company’s name, logo, and her home address.
When she said she was interested in modifying her mortgage, the scammer threatened her with foreclosure and said deputies would come to her home.
“To basically toss my butt out,” she laughed.
A spokesperson for PHH Mortgage told FOX13 the company did have a data breach in May 2023.
However, the company said that breach was related to a fourth-party vendor that worked with the company’s reverse “mortgage servicing portfolio.”
The PHH Mortgage spokesperson said the company had no reason to believe Mr. Smith’s data was involved in the event.
Still, he warned anyone with a mortgage to avoid engaging with unsolicited calls or messages.
“It caused a hardship because that’s hard-earned money,” he explained.
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