Freddie Mac is using YouTube drama to get the word out about foreclosure fraud.

Freddie Mac is one of the nation's largest investors in residential mortgages and it decided to air an Internet video about foreclosure fraud because a survey found the Internet is the first place one in four mortgage delinquent homeowners go for mortgage information.

That's almost as many troubled homeowners who go to their mortgage lender (28 percent) or bank (32 percent) first, according to the Freddie Mac-sponsored survey.

Unfortunately, Internet searches can send you right into the hands of con artists whose only desire is to steal your home equity.

Generally speaking, equity is the difference between the market value of a home and the amount the homeowner owes the lender.

Home values have fallen in many areas, but before the current soft market, the housing boom generated enough equity to see many borrowers through hard times.

Freddie Mac's two-minute, professionally-produced and acted "Avoid Fraud" video dramatizes a common foreclosure fraud scheme and demonstrates the game the scam artist plays to get at your equity.

According to the video:

• The con artist gets copies of public documents, including default and foreclosure notices filed at city and county offices.

• The scammer telephones to prey upon the homeowner's distressed and vulnerable state. He offers empty promises to convince the homeowner to give up deeds and other mortgage documents.

• The scammer uses the deeds to secure new loans, but pulls out the equity for himself and allows the homeowner's loan to go into foreclosure.

• The homeowner who was hoping for help, loses the home, equity and any cash necessary to finance the new loan.

Freddie Mac's "Avoid Fraud" YouTube video also comes with the message: "Shut the door on fraud." Report it to 1-800-4Fraud8 (1-800-437-2838).

Published: December 18, 2007

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.