The “Green Mirage” phone scam is targeting homeowners from India to all 50 states, using the caller ID of the borrower’s actual mortgage lender and tricking victims into calling the U.S.-based ” will be made to pay.
Whether you’re refining your business model, mastering new technology, or finding a strategy to take advantage of the next market boom, Inman Connect New York prepares you to take a bold step. The next chapter is about to begin. Please join us. Join us and thousands of other real estate leaders from January 22-24, 2025.
A massive phone spoofing operation based in India defrauded homeowners of hundreds of thousands of dollars by impersonating mortgage lenders and convincing them to route their loan payments to a “mule” living in the United States. .
The “Green Mirage” scam targets homeowners in all 50 states and makes an estimated 5,000 calls a week, the Federal Trade Commission warned in a Jan. 14 advisory.
Scammers impersonating more than 400 mortgage lenders are able to “spoof” the caller ID of a homeowner’s actual mortgage lender, often catching victims off guard, the FTC warned.
In many cases, victims are seeking redress from the actual mortgage lender and are expecting to hear back from them. Scammers often know details such as homeowners’ names, addresses, and current or previous mortgage lenders, and perpetrators can use social engineering tactics to gain trust.
“The caller frequently threatens foreclosure, but then offers to bail out if the homeowner makes a specified payment. Unbeknownst to the homeowner, that payment is made by Green Mirage, rather than by the homeowner’s lender. ,” the FTC said.
Victims not only lose the money they gave to the scammers, but they can also default on their debts by not paying their real lenders. According to the FTC, many victims don’t realize they’ve been scammed until their lender begins the foreclosure process.
“I applied for a loan modification with my mortgage company and the next day I received a call and the caller ID was mine. [mortgage] I answered the phone because I was at work,” one Pennsylvania victim reported. “A gentleman claiming to be from my mortgage company made me an offer. [a] This has been changed and payments will be made from April. I continued making payments until I received a Section 91 notice from the mortgage company stating that I was in default on my mortgage payments, and that’s when I realized that this man was a fraudster. ”
The FTC calls the Green Mirage scam (so-called because victims are sometimes instructed to upload funds to their Walmart Green Dot Money Card accounts) a “consumer trust violation” in telecommunications information services. “a serious threat to the
peter hyung
“The public’s trust in telecommunications networks erodes when attackers use malicious impersonation to perpetrate harmful identity fraud,” Peter Hyung, Acting Director of the FTC’s Enforcement Bureau, said in the advisory. “Congress recognized that caller ID information plays a critical role in whether consumers answer their calls. Distrust in caller ID information can harm consumers who miss important calls. or harm legitimate businesses trying to communicate with customers.”
Green Mirage employs callers who impersonate financial institutions, agents who contract with voice service providers and dialing platforms to connect to the U.S. telephone network, and “money mules” who collect payments from victims.
Although some of the people and entities involved in the scheme are based in India, money mules “are located throughout the United States and have reported to victims that they are lawyers to establish trust.” The FTC said:
In most cases, victims are directed to a third-party “attorney” or agent to mail a money order or to upload funds to a Walmart Green Dot Money Card account.
The FTC estimates that the scheme has defrauded victims of at least $400,000 over the past two years, but estimates the actual number is likely much higher. One victim lost $13,500 after paying the scammer for months.
The FTC received 853,935 fraud complaints in 2023, totaling nearly $2.7 billion in damages.
Get Inman’s Mortgage Overview Newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. Get the world’s biggest mortgage and closing news all in one place every Wednesday. Click here to subscribe.
Email Matt Carter
