About 500 people forced into a financial quagmire by the collapse of OPFM Inc. commiserated Tuesday at Highland Presbyterian Church about the mortgage broker's alleged duplicity.
Some were desperate, many were sad, a few cried, others yelled, and most were angry. But everyone showed up looking for direction.
Direction on how to deal with monthly mortgages that have ballooned by as much as 50 percent after Wesley A. Snyder, the company founder and president, allegedly left 800 customers with a $40 million tab when he filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy a month ago.
"I need help to re-establish the life I had," said Michael Doughton of Manheim who suddenly found himself owing an additional $613 a month for the next 13 years.
Others urged state Sen. Michael Brubaker, Rep. Tom Creighton and representatives from the offices of Sen. Arlen Specter and Sen. Robert Casey to find a way to help them.
About 300 Lancaster County families bought an OPFM low-rate paper mortgage, unaware that at Snyder's office was a larger, higher-rate mortgage in their name.
Snyder's OPFM Inc., which operated as Personal Financial Management Inc., and Image Masters Inc., 1672 Manheim Pike, told customers they were responsible for significantly larger mortgages he had brokered in their name through one of its 25 mortgage lending partners.
Those companies included such big-name financiers as Wells Fargo, GMAC, Countrywide, Citicorp, HSBC, Chase Home, Wachovia and Sovereign Bank.
Michelle Weaver, who helped arrange the meeting, the third in as many weeks, asked if people were on board with a class-action lawsuit filed Sept. 25 by the Kutztown law firm O'Keefe & Sher, which seeks to invalidate the mortgages taken out without the customers' approval.
"That attorney, O'Keefe, did more in one day than the government has done for us since this began," said an unidentified woman.
Several law-enforcement agencies, including the Pennsylvania Securities Commission, state Department of Banking and the state Attorney General's Office, are investigating Snyder's businesses.
At a previous meeting, a representative from the Attorney General's office warned OPFM customers that it might be difficult to prove whether any laws were broken.
However, Heather Keen of Narvon and Norman Johanson of Lancaster offered examples of what they consider illegalities.
Keen said she paid off a $112,000 mortgage from Washington Mutual Home Loans to Image Masters in 2005. Yet once Snyder's company collapsed, Keen learned she owed more than $137,000 from a mortgage OPFM took out with Wells Fargo in February 2007.
"After paying off our loan, we had no further communication with Image Masters or Washington Mutual," Keen said.
Keen said no one from Snyder's businesses ever informed her of the mortgage with Wells Fargo, nor did she ever sign any document with the company.
"Wells Fargo said the responsibility of the mortgage falls back to us even though they acknowledged that Image Masters was paid," Keen said.
Johanson, who turns 70 in December, said he and his wife put every cent they had toward refinancing their home, which they paid off to Washington Mutual in March.
Johanson said he paid $90,000 in addition to the principal when he paid off his home in payments to Image Masters. Yet, he learned last month that he still owes just under $160,000.
He asked the elected officials on stage to do "whatever they can to help him."
"We scrimped and saved to pay off our home in the hopes that we could retire very soon," Johanson said. "We won't be doing that for at least another five years."
Creighton Tuesday introduced legislation intended to amend the Deceptive or Fraudulent Business Practices law to include the written or verbal misrepresentation of the principal amount or interest rate of a loan.
The bill also would allow victims to pursue civil action following a conviction of this offense.
"This is a serious situation that my legislation will help better define and provide a means of recourse for the homebuyer if there is misrepresentation on the part of the broker, Creighton said.
E-mail: pburns@lnpnews.com