A federal judge has dismissed a suit aimed at forcing 24 mortgage companies to provide relief to more than 800 victims of Wesley A. Snyder's mortgage Ponzi scheme.

Michelle Weaver, a Manheim Township resident who was a customer of Snyder's OPFM Inc. — a consortium of six mortgage-related businesses — saw her mortgage balloon from about $90,000 to nearly $125,000 when Snyder's businesses collapsed Sept. 18.

"All we wanted was to pay the money we owed and live up to the contracts that we signed," Weaver said Tuesday. "But that's not likely to happen now."

In his memorandum Friday, U.S. District Judge James T. Giles rejected a suit intended to become a class action against 24 mortgage companies that Snyder sold mortgages for.

The suit was originally filed on behalf of a Berks County couple who alleged that Snyder was a servicing agent for a pair of mortgages signed with Bank and County Wide (which was sold to Sun Trust). It alleged that the mortgage companies failed to monitor Snyder's actions.

Snyder pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and admitted to engineering a Ponzi scheme that will cost his customers an estimated $25 million more in increased mortgage costs.

Almost 300 Lancaster County customers — mostly signed on from Snyder's Personal Financial Management office in Manheim Township — believed their mortgage contracts were either paid off or were significantly less than what the mortgage companies claimed.

Under Snyder's system, customers would refinance their mortgages for thousands of dollars more than they owed, then return the extra cash to Snyder, who wrote "wrap-around" mortgages at interest rates a point or more lower than standard rates.

The idea was that returns on investments made with the extra money would pay the difference between the mortgage Snyder held and the original mortgage.

Giles essentially rejected the claim that Snyder's customers did not know that the deals they made with OPFM were secondary to larger mortgages they had with the 24 mortgage companies named in the suit.

Though mortgage companies sent all bills and correspondence concerning Snyder's customers to OPFM offices, Giles ruled there was no documentation that designated Snyder as a servicing agent of the mortgage companies.

Giles wrote that the allegation that the defendants hired Snyder as their servicing agent was "totally inconsistent" with the original documents borrowers signed with the mortgage companies.

Linda Bryan, one of Snyder's victims from Landisville, said Snyder's customers did not knowingly sign "a paper saying they would make their payments to their banks."

"Then why were we paying Snyder all these years and he was paying the banks?" Bryan asked. "How can you be so stupid to see that we did not know and that we were paying Snyder."

Snyder signed a plea agreement Nov. 29 with the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, agreeing to make restitution to his victims, which the court stipulates to be somewhere between $15 million and $32 million.

The exact amount will be determined by the court when Snyder is sentenced May 20.

Snyder has filed both personal and corporate bankruptcy. He faces a potential 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine, in addition to the restitution.

The case has attracted the attention of U.S. Sens. Arlen Specter and Bob Casey Jr., state Sen. Michael Brubaker and several other lawmakers.

Specter and Casey held a hearing in December with firms involved with Snyder's companies, including chief executives of six banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

All the mortgage companies have agreed to allow Snyder's customers to pay less than what they had been paying Snyder, but those agreements expire May 31.

Brubaker and Casey said Tuesday that they will continue to fight for Snyder's victims.

The median loss for Snyder's mortgage customers was $29,000, according to court documents. The largest was $201,000, suffered by Norman Johanson of Lancaster.

E-mail: pburns@lnpnews.com