$233,600 is fine for Revere lawyer

REVERE – The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination has ordered a Revere attorney to pay $233,600 for discriminating against 17 Latino homeowners by targeting them with predatory ads for modifying mortgages.Attorney David Zak said he will appeal the ruling and denies any wrongdoing.”Attorney Zak engaged in conduct that can only be described as despicable,” said Commissioner Sunila Thomas-George of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD). “When tough times hit and hard-working families struggle to pay the mortgage, the last thing they need is to have a lawyer defraud them out of thousands of dollars by exploiting their limited English proficiency.”MCAD Hearing Officer Betty Waxman found that Zak opened an office in Revere because he believed its Latino community would be “easy targets” and “gullible,” according to a press release from the state commission. The commission said Zak then used print and radio advertisements in Spanish and Portuguese to reach Latino homeowners having difficulty making mortgage payments: falsely claiming to have saved hundreds of Latinos from foreclosure; promising to cut their mortgage payments in half; saying he was the sole attorney in the state who knew how to modify loans; and boasting of a proprietary “secret formula” and “magic numbers.” Waxman ruled that Zak committed a number of discriminatory practices. These include that Zak charged Latino clients inflated and duplicative fees for services available elsewhere for free. Zak was also ruled to have encouraged clients to intentionally fall behind on mortgage payments, did not adequately translate documents, misrepresented the status of clients’ cases, often didn’t secure promised modifications on mortgages, did not give appropriate refunds and was threatening, intimidating and demeaning.Zak was ordered to pay $116,000 in damages to 17 complainants and an additional $107,000 in emotional distress damages to 12 complainants. Zak was also fined $10,000 for the “egregious and unlawful nature of (his) conduct.Zak denied any wrongdoing and said he represented more than a hundred Latinos, of which a small group were dissatisfied.”These were a series of misunderstandings that were between me and a very small group of clients, and they were whipped into a frenzy,” Zak said Monday. “It was a series of misunderstandings that were inaccurately labeled as discrimination. It could not be that I harbor those views because then no one would come to me.”The Attorney General’s Office is also investigating Zak for predatory mortgage-modification services.”The $233,600 judgement should stand as a warning to everyone that there are serious consequences for engaging in discriminatory conduct,” Thomas-George said.