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	<title>Investigative Guy John Mattes - Reports &#38; Scams &#187; mortgage scam</title>
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	<link>http://www.investigativeguy.com</link>
	<description>Investigations &#38; Stories - Public Option, Big Company Scams, Corporate Theives &#38; More!</description>
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		<title>Calling Out Mortgage Modification Schemes</title>
		<link>http://www.investigativeguy.com/calling-out-mortgage-modification-schemes/</link>
		<comments>http://www.investigativeguy.com/calling-out-mortgage-modification-schemes/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:36:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>jmattes</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Don't Be a Sucker]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[1st American law center]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[consumers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dean chandler]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fbi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foreclosure]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gary bobel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[homeowners]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[investigate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Investigative guy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Mattes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[john mattes reporter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mortgage fraud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mortgage modification]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mortgage scam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mortgage scams]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[real estate fraud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[safehouse 911]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.investigativeguy.com/?p=517</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[UPDATE SEE BELOW
9 months ago we exposed a mortgage modification scheme that was preying on consumers nationwide .Consumers were angry that after paying  the firm thousands of dollars to save their homes,the firm had done nothing.Consumers lost money and often their homes. The company claimed they were helping homeowners get mortgage modifications ,but all [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>17</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>InvestigativeGuy.. Just  Another Day on the Beat</title>
		<link>http://www.investigativeguy.com/investigativeguy-just-another-day-on-the-beat/</link>
		<comments>http://www.investigativeguy.com/investigativeguy-just-another-day-on-the-beat/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 22 Apr 2010 01:15:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>jmattes</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Crime Does Pay]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[consumers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fraud]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[investigate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Investigativeguy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Mattes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[john mattes reporter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[modification]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mortgage fraud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mortgage scam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reporter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[scams]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[scams reporter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[scandal real estate scandal.homeowners]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.investigativeguy.com/194/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[BACKGROUND ON THE ATTACK
TV reporter beaten, but not broken 
San Diego Union Tribune &#124; 16 SEPT 2006 &#124; 



NANCEE E. LEWIS /  TV reporter John Mattes still showed the signs of his on-camera beating. A widely viewed video of the attack has made him an accidental celebrity.

San Diego TV reporter John Mattes was hard at work this week, calling sources and chasing stories, even while convalescing from the bloody on-camera beating that turned him into an accidental celebrity. His body still aches pretty much everywhere. He has scratches on his face, human bite marks on his hands and arms, several cracked ribs and whiplashlike symptoms in his back. His gouged left eye socket remains tender and swollen.

“They had to remove particles of things that didn't come from me,” he said Thursday night, sitting in his cubicle at the Fox 6 News studio in Kearny Mesa. “Human hairs. Not mine. You don't want to think about that.”

His sudden fame has left him a bit mentally drained. In the past 10 days he has been interviewed by everyone from Larry King to a Costa Rican radio talk-show host. He turned down an offer to appear on David Letterman.

He's also received several hundred e-mails from people around the world who have seen the video of him being pummeled by a husband-and-wife couple upset about his investigative reporting. The footage is wildly popular on the Internet. On some Web sites, Mattes's beat-down is offered up as a kind of cyberspace sight gag.

“This video has it all!” one Web site declares. “Bloody reporter, bleeped profanity, cops with guns drawn, you name it! I thought I had seen the exciting part until about halfway through . . . then it gets AT LEAST eight times more exciting!”

Mattes, , said he still hasn't seen the footage in its entirety.

“I'm not a voyeur of the violence on my own body,” he said. “That would not entertain me.”

How beating happened Mattes has worked as an investigative reporter in Miami, Los Angeles and San Diego, doing the kind of in-your-face-with-a-microphone journalism that tends to irritate his subjects. Still, the Sept. 5 encounter with Assad Suleiman and Suleiman's wife, Rosa Amelia Barraza, was the first time Mattes has been physically attacked for his reporting. He had been investigating the La Jolla couple as part of a series of stories on mortgage fraud in San Diego. He was interviewing someone outside a private residence in La Jolla near a commercial building owned by Suleiman. Suddenly, Suleiman's wife arrived on the scene, yelling at Mattes, squirting him with water and at one point slapping the reporter in the face with a plastic bottle.

Suleiman drove up a few minutes later, got out of his car and started swinging at Mattes. Then Suleiman body-slammed the reporter to the ground and wrestled with him in the grass as bystanders tried to break up the fight. By the end of the melee – all of it captured on video by Mattes' cameraman – the left side of Mattes' face was covered with blood.

Suleiman and his wife now face various criminal charges, including assault. Both are free on bail. Suleiman's attorney, Kerry Steigerwalt, said his client was simply protecting his wife from a harassing reporter.

Mattes, meanwhile, has gone about his job as usual without missing a single day of work. In fact, he was back on Fox 6 answering questions about the ordeal that same night, after being treated for his injuries at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla.

“You can rip my face off, but I'm still here, and I'm still going to report on the larger issues,” he said.

He is somewhat amazed, he said, at the number of people who seem fascinated by the sight of his pummeling. During his interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune, he received a call from someone at CourtTV asking about how to obtain rights to the footage.

“The great thing is, this is America,” he said after hanging up the phone. “People can make money off a beating.”

Vows not to back down Mattes has worked at Fox 6 News for more than three years, and his cubicle is filled with statues and plaques he has won for his reporting on consumer fraud and other topics. This year he did a series of exposes on a used-car dealer accused of ripping off military families. Followed by a cameraman, Mattes stalked the salesman through a parking lot, asking, “How many scams are you running? How many victims do you have?”

The man tried to flee the camera while muttering, “I don't know anything about it.”

Before becoming a reporter, Mattes worked as a lawyer in Miami, earning a measure of fame for suing the U.S. government on behalf of several hundred South Vietnamese commandos who secretly worked for the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Based on Mattes' legal work, the U.S. government admitted the commandos' existence and agreed to compensate them for the years they were held as prisoners of war.

None of those accomplishments, however, has afforded Mattes quite the level of public recognition that comes with getting punched and bitten on videotape.

Mattes considers himself lucky to be alive. At one point during the brawl, he said, Suleiman's wife went searching for a gun in her car but apparently was unable to find it.

“I can joke about it, but the reality is someone tried to kill me,” Mattes said.

He also defended the actions of his cameraman, who continued to film instead of putting down the camera and trying to break up the fight.

“My job is to report, his job is to record it,” Mattes said. “Had this not been on videotape, we wouldn't be having this discussion.”

In the months ahead, Mattes intends to continue reporting on mortgage fraud in San Diego. Last night, however, he was scheduled to depart for a much-needed vacation to Europe with his wife, a nurse practitioner.

Given the type of work he's done over the years, he's surprised it took this long for someone to throw a punch at him.

“My luck ran out on the tony streets of La Jolla,” he said.]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Meet the Mortgage Modification Whistleblower: Part 2 of Video!</title>
		<link>http://www.investigativeguy.com/beware-of-bankers-bearing-toasters/</link>
		<comments>http://www.investigativeguy.com/beware-of-bankers-bearing-toasters/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 07 Oct 2009 05:07:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Fine Print]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[financial scandal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ls]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mortgage scam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[scam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[scandal real estate scandal.homeowners]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.investigativeguy.com/?p=19</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The mortgage scams continue and the I Guy is on it&#8230; hear the latest from the whistle blower who&#8217;s worked at these mortgage modification companies. She reveals the lack of security of the files and what these companies really do &#8212; or don&#8217;t do&#8211; for you.
I got your back
John Mattes


]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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