They say that the best form of flattery is being copied. However, I wonder if you might call it flattery or Plagiarism? Hmmmmmmmm. Well, yesterday I received an email from one of my past clients who said she saw an article I had written on Sacramento Real Estate Voice about Fraud and was wondering if I happen to see the article on Mortgage Fraud Blog.
I clicked on the link and was surprised to see someone else's name and my entire article word for word and photo for photo placed on the Mortgage Fraud Blog.
Since my article Fraud in Real Estate? was written November 29, 2006 and the article Great Mortgage Fraud Info THANK YOU Tracy Coenen was posted February 6, 2007, it is apparent that my blog was hi-jacked with absolutely no reference to the author (me) but a subliminal message that Tracy Coenen may have written it. WOW! What a surprise!
I sent an email to the site as well as placing a comment on the blog itself. This I think bears remembering for those that have an outside blogs as well as automated responses on websites....my comment as well as a current client's comment was responded to with a strange reply that I will let you take a look at. One should always make sure that you read the comments and reply with a succinct answer that has something to do with the comment.
This evening I received an email from Mortgage Fraud Blog with their sincerest apologies,
"Thank you very much for contacting us regarding your article. My sincerest apologies as we obtain information from countless sources and are unable to verify the origins of them all. Please refer to our blog for our corrections."
This reply has me somewhat baffled in that, if that's the case then our articles could possibly be anywhere at any given time since there are countless sources and the origins are not verified. A mite troublesome, wouldn't you say? Have any of you encountered something of this nature?
Well, to put this to rest, although the original article on Mortgage Fraud blog still reads as though someone else wrote it...they have posted a Thank You Gena Riede post today and linked the title of that article to Sacramento Real Estate Voice. However, as I stated the original blog remains somewhat tenuous.
Be on the look out for your articles...you never know who might be "flattering" you!
Add: 2/23/07
JUST NOTICED SOMETHING ELSE! Cindi Dixon who is the one that emailed me above commented on my original blog the following and yet Cindi as well as the response this morning on their blog indicates that they don't always know who wrote the article prior to publishing, hmmmmmmmmmm:
February 6th, 2007 at 8:13 am e
Hi,
Thank you very much for one of the best articles we have seen published on mortgage fraud. We posted this story on our Mortgage Fraud Discussion Board: http://discussionboards.mortgagefraudqc.com/
A similar thing happened to me in the mid-1990s by a company in Huntington Beach, Anastasi Realty and his brother who owned Anastasi construction. I was a single mother and making a very moderate income when I was coerced with promises of building my credit and hope of my own home ownership one day. After getting reeled in by promises of becoming a property owner (while renting myself), an intermediary orchestrated the loans on the homes that valued approximately $750k for the new construction town homes, back then!. There were first, second and Title 1 (or third) liens on the homes. Another co-worker was also in possession of three other units. After the simultaneous closings and the disbursement of all of the funds, of which I received nothing, the culprits pocketed close to two million dollars off of us. Within two months the "tenants" stopped paying the rents (one of the tenants was the individual who orchestrated the deals). When I began to inquire as the lender's collection calls began, I was threatened with being turned into the FBI for my participation, and then my children were threatened and I left it alone.
This motivated my desire to learn more and I have had a career in fighting mortgage fraud for the past 10 years. If there is ever anything I can be of assistance with feel free to contact me. We welcome you to visit our Mortgage Fraud discussion board and encourage your readers to utilize our blog as well to share their similar experiences. The reason the criminals are allowed to continue is that their names and company information remain a secret until (and IF) there is a prosecution.
Please let your readers know they can openly share their stories so we can prevent other innocent people searching for the American Dream from having their lives destroyed.
Cindi Dixon, Director
Mortgage Fraud Investigations
Mela Capital Group
Cindi@MortgageFraudQC.com
http://reportmortgagefraud.org/
http://discussionboards.mortgagefraudqc.com/
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