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Recently, we posted an update about how it seems that somebody, most likely with a personal or business interest in this story, is helping to boost the truth about the loan sharks at Verico the Mortgage Station and their financially motivated allies at HomeEquity Bank. The plot has now thickened.

The newest and most effective means of search engine optimization is called long-tail keywords. We know about it but have never implemented the technique as both our websites are well-established. An example would be to search “mortgage brokers in Simcoe County” as opposed to “mortgage”, “brokers”, and “Simcoe County” as separate words. The algorithms used are very similar to predictive text.

We tested our theory using a variety of suggestions generated by Google Algorithms, and we can now confirm that we do indeed have a silent and unknown online promotions assistant. As an example, we searched “HomeEquity Bank fraud”, and our report, which we promoted as “Shaking Down Seniors in Innisfil”, came up first on page one of Google. Another story about HomeEquity Bank, entitled “Is the HomeEquity Bank Dodging Or Deliberating About Loansharking at Verico the Mortgage Station? ” came up at number five on that same page.

The reverse mortgage has a bad reputation due to some less-than-ethical actions taken by the sellers of a similar product in the United States. The laws in Canada are very different than those of our neighbours to the south, and it is not so easy for corrupt lenders to foreclose on vulnerable seniors who did not fully understand what they were signing.

Regardless of the reason, the CHIP Reverse Mortgages carries a stigma, and as such, according to Google Analytics data, searches for “HomeEquity” or “Home Equity Bank” are often supplemented with the word “fraud”. One example would be “HomeEquity Bank Reverse Mortgage cases of fraud”.

Also, Google today uses an advanced common language thesaurus, so words like “scam” or “rip-off” would be synonymous with “fraud”. According to our research, these words are used a lot when researching the CHIP Reverse Mortgages, and also the HomeEquity Bank that is selling it. Understandably, people want to understand the worst-case scenario when buying into such a huge unknown financial obligation.

This issue is so important to HomeEquity Bank that according to reports seen here in our search results, the corporation has gone so far as to hire an experienced conman to help educate their staff and senior clients about the risks and how to avoid being defrauded.

Unfortunately for them, all those efforts to appear caring and proactive against elder fraud have been superseded by our factual and supported reporting that details how the HomeEquity Bank has sided with loan sharks in the name of profit. In doing so, they have chosen to ignore the risks to the financial security of often vulnerable seniors.

For several months, the management team at HomeEquity Bank have had fully non-redacted copies of our evidence, which include a bank statement and the disbursement record of their company’s mortgage. So, they know the brokers at Verico the Mortgage Station committed the crime of usury or loan sharking by charging just shy of $500.00 in interest and fees on a loan of $2,000.00 that was outstanding for only 46-48 days. That short range is dependent upon whether or not you count the day of the loan and the day it was paid back. Those facts represent a cost of borrowing of 198.25 per cent in interest and fees when the legal limit is 60%.

The financial professionals at HomeEquity Bank also know about the frankly phenomenal number of lies that were told by principal broker David Flude to evade an audit or investigation for usury or loan sharking by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA).

We have also shown through the use of evidence that detectives at the South Simcoe Police Service were “motivated” by the multi-million-dollar brokerage to omit evidence of the crime so they could shield the brokers at Verico the Mortgage Station. That act of apparent obstruction of justice is the subject of pending investigations by the Ontario Provincial Police Financial Crimes Division and the Office of the Independent Police Review Director.

We have tried to understand why somebody with the means and resources would invest in improving our reach, and the most likely reasons are profit and image. A competing mortgage broker or lender could see our written and video content, and our evidence, as a way of convincing potential clients to come to them instead of to Verico the Mortgage Station or HomeEquity Bank. There is competition for both.

An equally likely scenario is that the promoter would want to purge their profession of such illegal and unethical activities by forcing David Flude and his brokers out of business before potential customers become disillusioned with brokers and choose instead to go to banks for financing.

Finally, a third option would be that they want to push the HomeEquity Bank to sever their self-debasing business association with the loan sharks of Lefroy before the CHIP Reverse Mortgage that they also sell is tainted for all, which is becoming the case from the searches we conducted.

It is also obvious to all that this story has been online for more than 500 days, and yet, neither the brokers of Verico the Mortgage Station nor HomeEquity Bank have taken any action against our right to report on this story. On one side of the coin, you have a multi-million-dollar brokerage that is backed by a multi-billion-dollar financial institution. On the other, there is a small not-for-profit community media service that stands alone, backed by nothing but the tens of thousands of people they have helped through the donation of hundreds of thousands of dollars in services to their community.

During all that time, the only action undertaken was by the HomeEquity Bank, when executives whined to Facebook in an attempt to silence our story through false claims of copyright infringement. Under Section 29 of the Copyright Act of Canada, ‘Fair Dealing’ permits the limited use of copyright-protected material without the risk of infringement and without having to seek the permission of copyright owners. It is intended to provide a balance between the rights of creators and the rights of users. The exception applies to research, private study, education, satire, parody, criticism, review, and news reporting. Details can be found in our report “HomeEquity Bank Turns To Censorship - Far Too Little, and Much Too Late”.

The simple fact is that there was never any reason for the HomeEquity Bank to be humiliated by its inclusion in this story. However, they chose to add themselves by refusing to accept the responsibility of investigating the brokers at Verico the Mortgage Station who sell their CHIP Reverse Mortgages while also loan sharking their clients. It is also a fact that when stringing along her client in an attempt to coerce him to accept a more expensive option, broker Lisa Purchase threw the HomeEquity Bank under the bus, by blaming them for all of the delays. Regardless, and despite having that evidence, the billionaire lapdogs continue to lick at the heels of the loan sharks because there is money to be made, even if it means endangering the financial security of potentially vulnerable seniors who go to Verico the Mortgage Station specifically to buy the CHIP Reverse Mortgage.

HomeEquity Bank had an obligation to protect their clients and they had the evidence to confirm claims of wrongdoing. Regardless, HomeEquity Bank dug in their heels and now they have sunken so deep into the quicksand that they don’t know how to escape. It is now almost a year and a half since we first posted about this story. So, it is very obvious to all who are following this story that both Verico the Mortgage Station and HomeEquity Bank are, with good reason, scared to take the matter to court where the evidence will be seen by a judge.

We have offered multiple times to let all involved parties discuss this on camera and we even offered to cancel the documentary and remove all posts about it if any of the people in the story can prove on camera using tangible evidence that we are not telling the truth. Details can be found in our report “Lies, Manipulation, and Loansharking – Verico the Mortgage Station”.

Apparently, both the brokers at Verico the Mortgage Station and the board of directors at HomeEquity Bank thought or hoped that the exposure and evidence of their legal and ethical wrongdoing would just go away, and that this story would fade and wither into oblivion. However, as is clear from the visitor logs to our website, that we hold in confidence or sanitize before sharing, both corrupt corporations are now feeling the public backlash that has been created by their own arrogance and the abandonment of their once-trusting clients.

Our new friend’s ability to promote us so effectively will help us greatly as we work to reach more seniors, and those who care for them, to warn all potential victims about the dangers presented by the criminal abuse of trust demonstrated by the brokers of Verico the Mortgage Station, and the self-serving, profit-driven decisions of the HomeEquity Bank that endanger the financial security of their clients.

We know that our content is being both followed and shared, both openly and covertly, by a multitude of competing brokers, and it is also being followed by other providers of mortgage financing who are likely a tad smarter about bad exposure than the board of directors of the HomeEquity Bank. We will soon be reaching out to all those lenders seeking an interview.

It is fairly evident when looking at the steadily growing number of clicks coming to the pages associated with HomeEquity Bank and the CHIP Reverse Mortgages, that people who might have bought their product are now choosing alternatives. We also doubt that the board of directors of HomeEquity Bank is receiving much in the way of support from the retired education workers who are members of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board that recently purchased the company. They are, after all, seniors and they will not want to feel like being the villains who are cheating others of their generation.

Every day, due to the efforts of people like our unidentified new best friend and the ethical brokers and other professionals from the mortgage industry who share our work, more people are coming to realise that given the size disparagement between these multi-million and multi-billion dollar companies and our own small not-for-profit, if we were lying about anything we have posted or stated as fact, lawyers for either company would have squashed our social enterprise like a bug in any court of law. The fact that they have not even sent to us an angry email speaks volumes to most people. We have the evidence to support our allegations, and we know enough about the legal system to be able to present it in a court of law.

The simple fact is that these mega-corporations have not contested a single claim made by us despite our story being online and open to the public for more than a year and a half. Now, that reality is only going to get worse as more people learn the truth through the services of our anonymous promotional assistant and our other supporters.

The HomeEquity Bank made the mistake of choosing money over morals and profit over protecting their clients from the crime of loan sharking, while also fully endorsing the decision of the principal broker of Verico the Mortgage Station to simply ignore regulatory requirements that are in place to protect clients from exactly that kind of crime.

Those decisions are now damaging their reputation, which is all of their own doing, and they are proving the old adage that when you lay down with dogs you wake up with fleas.