Complaint Review: Hope Now Modifications - HNMFS - Cherry Hill New Jersey

We had been working with Hopenow (the real goverment program) trying to get our lender to give us a modification when I was layed off from work. We were contacted both by email and phone calls from HopeNow Modifications and they made us believe they were a division of the goverment program. We started the procedure with them in Jan 2009. After we fedex in all papers needed they said our lender UBS was requiring a good faith escrow account to be sat up in the amount of one months mortgage payment , we have legal documents that sats if they can not get our lender to mod. loan we will get our funds back 100%. I allowed them to make two debits from our checking account one on Feb 2 and the other on Feb 9 totaling almost 2300.00. They were in contact with us weekly sometimes every other day either by phone or email (have all emails between our worker and myself) then we received from our lender a Intent to Foreclosure saying we had 45 days before foreclosure proceeding would take place, I called for three days leaving numerous messages with HopeNow (says in contract any legal docs or papers from lender have to be faxed/mailed within 24 hours) finally I was able to get ahold of our worker said they had been out of the office due to bad weather. I question at that time why our lender was proceeding with foreclosure if the were willing to mod our loan (as HopeNow had told us) was told it was between our lender UBS loss mitigation dept. and HopeNow's lawyers that it would take 30-45 days to be patient that everything looked good. Then on Feb 20, half of our funds were deposit back into our checking account (1140.85) I emailed/called again it took afew days to get ahold of our worker and was told they just had to put half the money into a different account for the lawyers, I questioned this because our funds were in escrow or so we thought. Then on Feb 23 the funds 1140.00 were again withdrawn from our account.At that time I again started calling again no reply!!!!Finally was able to get ahold of someone in customer service the first part of March and was told now it would be 90-120 days to know if we got a modification because they had been swamped with people trying to get modifications. Then I got another letter from our lender stating we had another 45 days Intent to foreclose (thought this was because HopeNow was getting somewhere with our lender and this was a good sign). Then on march 18 I received a call both to my cell and home phone from the lawyer firm that was working with hopeNow (KRKB also out of Cherry Hill, NJ) that indeed we were a victim of fraud and to contact our lender asap. That they would be in contact later this week about refunding the half of our funds they received but the other half we could basically kiss goodbye! I contact loss mitigation at our lender and was told they had only heard one time from HopeNow and that was back in Jan, they to had been trying to get ahold of them on our behalf to work modification deal. At that time I called HopeNow only to find they have changed their name to HNMFS, I have again left several voicemails/emails to no reply.It has now been since March 18, I have left message everyday. Our worker fed us a complete line of bull along with this company!!!! Now our lender is willing to work with us but we are out 2300.00!!!!! please help us and stop this company from taking of peoples hard earned money!!!!!

Shaun & paula m

murphy, North Carolina

U.S.A.