Lyndhurst con man stole mortgage payments for more than a year, Bergen County Prosecutor says

A Lyndhurst man and several of his relatives have been arrested after authorities discovered that he was using his mortage modification company to steal mortgage payments from homeowners with promises to modify their mortgages with their banks.

According to the NJ.com article, “Adan R. Cueva, owner of Time Consulting and Associates, bilked homeowners who hired his company to modify their existing mortgages, Molinelli said. Police arrested him Thursday.”

Cueva, 31, promised to reduce homeowners’ mortgage payments and lower their interest rates. His company charged a fee between $3,500 and $5,000, usually requiring at least a $1,500 down payment. Cueva told the homeowners to make their monthly mortgage payments to Time Consulting instead of their lenders while promising to forward the payments to the lenders while negotiating for lower payments. Unfortunately for the homeowners, however, his company never forwarded the mortgage payments and the banks placed the mortgages in default.

The con man went so far as to have his employees impersonate the homeowners to the banks, created fake letters from the banks to the homeowners saying they were approved for a trial period on their mortgage, and used the homeowners personal information he obtained to open credit card accounts for his own use. He and two of his relatives have been arrested and charged with theft by deception and other fraud related offenses. They are being held in the Bergen County Jail on $500,000 bail.