Courts should stop foreclosure scams

Among the hard lessons of the Great Recession was that people lose their homes to foreclosure for a lot of reasons and many of them don’t have anything to do with being irresponsible.

Losing the stability and hope of wealth-building that homeownership represents is crushing enough. Learning that people in that situation have been tricked or outright robbed out of hard-won equity to which they were entitled — and which could have helped them get back on their feet — makes the blood boil.

Every Ohio county should be reviewing how it handles

sheriff’s sales so that no one else falls prey to the ruthless and, in some cases, criminal schemes outlined in last weekend’s series “Foreclosed and Fleeced.”

In Franklin County, that needs to start with a change in practice by Clerk of Courts Maryelleno’shaughnessy’s office and more due diligence throughout the process of disbursing proceeds from foreclosures.

Following a tip, reporters John Futty and Jim Weiker and researcher Julie Fulton combed through records from central Ohio foreclosure cases and discovered a small industry based on misrepresentation, fraud and disgusting callousness.

Contrary to what many may think, foreclosure doesn’t always leave the former homeowner with nothing. After the house is sold and delinquent debts and mortgage balances are paid, there sometimes is money left over.

That money belongs to the person who made all those mortgage payments before falling into foreclosure, but sometimes the former homeowner doesn’t know it exists. That allows a sharp operator with the conscience of a reptile to move in and take it.

Ohio law, Revised Code section 2329.44, is meant to reduce this, by requiring county clerks to notify former homeowners whenever a sheriff’s sale yields excess proceeds. But many clerks, including O’shaughnessy, haven’t been making such notifications.

Clerks in Hamilton, Summit, Delaware and other counties have, and the practice saved Jeanne Shaw from being tricked out of nearly $37,000. One of those sharp operators, Powell real estate agent Robert P. Anderson, talked Shaw into signing away the rights to her foreclosed Delaware home in