Attempt to Take Home From Woman, 72, Fails : Legal aid: Foreclosure sale is stopped. A suit has been filed against a group of lenders, loan brokers and escrow firms that allegedly tried to swindle the retired secretary.

Alone, elderly and nearly incapacitated by two strokes, Eleanor Dauterive appears to be the perfect target for scam artists who seek out the helpless and financially insecure. And, authorities suspect, she was--almost.

On Wednesday, the 72-year-old retired secretary was scheduled to lose her modest home just west of USC in a foreclosure sale: She could not make payments on a $68,000 home equity loan she allegedly was deceived into signing for.

Instead, Legal Aid Foundation attorneys announced at a news conference in her living room, the sale has been blocked temporarily and a suit on her behalf has been filed against a group of lenders, loan brokers and escrow companies who allegedly swindled Dauterive. The Los Angeles Police Department also has begun a criminal investigation into the matter, a department official said.

According to the attorneys, Dauterive allegedly came close to falling victim to a Los Angeles scam as old as real estate, signing away partial equity in her house to someone who had promised to steer her through a foreclosure threat.

On Wednesday, all the details of a house almost lost and regained seemed bewildering to Dauterive, a quiet woman who, according to her public interest attorneys, has lost her mental capacity to the point where she wanders her yard, neglects daily chores and sometimes ends up sleeping in her car.

“I probably would have had to go into some kind of home,” Dauterive said matter-of-factly, when asked what would have happened if her home of 30 years had been sold. “I think they have taken advantage of me.”

Dauterive’s predicament can be reversed, now that foreclosure has been averted, Legal Aid Foundation attorneys Anthony B. Hall and Patricia Goldsmith said. But her case is just another troubling sign that such scams are flourishing in Los Angeles, with at least 25 complaints each week coming into the nonprofit foundation’s Homeowners Outreach Center, Hall said.

Each year, Hall said, more than 150 people in Los Angeles, most of them elderly, lose their homes by either inadvertently signing away the title to their homes outright, or by agreeing to hidden loan terms they cannot possibly repay. Countless others are saddled with huge debts and fees.

Typically, homeowners fall victim to conspirators who read in the newspapers that their property is in jeopardy of foreclosure. Under the pretense of providing help, a loan broker then pressures the homeowner into signing documents--papers that the homeowner hasn’t read. Scam operators borrow money against the home equity, and then disappear.

Such frauds often are undetected until it is too late and foreclosure proceedings are underway, Hall said.

Police and public interest lawyers say scam operators look for people like Dauterive--fixed-income homeowners, strapped for cash and ignorant of the law. They prefer the elderly because they are often alone, own property outright and suffer from the mental deficiencies that come with age.

In Dauterive’s suit, filed Jan. 2 in Los Angeles Superior Court, the legal aid lawyers seek the permanent return of Dauterive’s home, and unspecified damages for fraud, conspiracy and negligence. Superior Court Judge Ronald M. Sohigian on Monday approved a restraining order blocking foreclosure of the property until Jan. 28, at which time Hall will seek a preliminary injunction preventing any further action until settlement of the lawsuit, Hall said.

According to the suit, a loan broker named Samuel Savage visited Dauterive last April and told her she was in danger of losing her house because of a delinquent $1,000 loan. After getting her to quickly sign a stack of papers under the pretense of protecting the house, Savage then conspired with the Ronco Capital Corp. and other alleged conspirators to gain partial title to Dauterive’s property and borrow $68,000 against it, the suit said.

As a result, Dauterive was required to pay $1,200 in interest a month for one year, after which the entire $68,000 would have become due, the suit alleges. When she didn’t make the payments, foreclosure was initiated. A concerned neighbor brought the case to the attention of authorities.

Dauterive said she has no idea what she signed or that she borrowed money.

Police said they are looking for Savage, but cannot find him. The Ronco official named in the suit, Ronald D. Perlstein, did not return phone calls by The Times to his office on Wednesday.

Officials who engage legally in the large home equity loan business are dismayed by cases like that of Dauterive.

“There are any number of good, honest brokers in town, and we deal with them daily,” said James N. Laichas, a senior vice president for the Ticor Title Insurance Cos. “Unfortunately, you do get some people who will take advantage of a borrower who needs help, and defraud them.”

It is difficult to prove exactly who is involved in such schemes, particularly those middlemen who get paid a fee or a percentage to help transfer the titles and obtain the loans, according to Detective Richard LeVos of LAPD bunco squad, who is investigating the Dauterive case.

“I see so much of this,” LeVos said. “There’s no slowing them down. And it’s so easy--there are no safeguards to prevent it, except to make the individual (homeowner) be aware. To go to someone who has worked hard all their life and take their last years away from them by openly attacking their only thing of value, that is unconscionable.”