CBS 5 Investigates With Anna Werner

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ― Some customers of the loan modification company Saving California have complained that they paid thousands of dollars for little help. The owner sat down with CBS 5 Investigates to explain the company and himself.

"I'm calling the police. You're done! You're done!" That was the response the last time CBS5 Investigates spoke to Saving California owner, Ray Jeter. But now, Jeter is apologizing for what he calls "my rudeness to you and your crew on camera."

Saving California advertises that it can help stop foreclosures by lowering mortgage payments for struggling homeowners. But some customers such as Martha Mendez, who paid Jeter $3,500, told CBS 5 Investigates "They ask you for some money and they don't do anything for you."

Jeter admits the company took some customers' money upfront in violation of the law. How many? "I don't know the exact number," he told CBS 5.

But Jeter said those problems were caused by someone else. He blamed a broker working out of Salinas, who Jeter said brought in clients for Saving California and improperly accepted those upfront payments.

"That was stopped as it became fact to me that someone was operating without permission," Jeter said.

However, California's Department of Real Estate has never implicated the broker. Instead, they told Jeter to stop taking the money in a desist and restrain order.

And some former employees who worked for Jeter shared their experiences with CBS 5 Investigates; one calling him a "a con artist." The former employee, who still works in the industry, did not want to be identified. However, the person said in their opinion, Jeter wanted "To make money. And it just didn't matter who he took with him in order to make that money." The same former employee also said when they started work, by their estimate, "90 percent of the files had not even been touched."

Jeter's response? "There's not a file that has ever been untouched. All those files are worked," Jeter told CBS 5 Investigates. To support his claim, he pointed to files that he said represented successful loan modifications, like the file for the Olivo family of Salinas.

The Olivos told CBS 5 Investigates they signed up to try to save two homes, their own and a son's, by lowering the mortgage payments.

"They said they were going to lower it almost in half," Adela Olivo said. But she said Saving California did not lower the payments by half. Instead, the couple said the loan modification they were offered would have saved them just a few hundred dollars a month, not nearly enough to forestall a foreclosure. "I feel like they swindled us," said Adela Olivo. She and her husband now fear that any day they'll be put out of their home.

In response to CBS 5's question as to whether customers should have expected their homes would be saved, Jeter told CBS 5 "They should believe that we are going to help them reduce their monthly payments."

And what about Martha Mendez? Jeter said Saving California negotiated her loan modification, but she said she had to do it herself. "I have papers to prove that I did it," she said.

Jeter told CBS 5 she is not telling the truth, but Mendez disputed that. "I'm not lying," she told us. "He is lying! He is stealing the money from people like us."

Jeter said it's not true. He told CBS 5 Investigates he's a "model citizen."

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