Film Screening: Stealing Trust: Marylanders Speak Out on Frauds, Scams and Financial Abuses

MCRC Documentary Film Event:

STEALING TRUST: MARYLANDERS SPEAK OUT ON SCAMS, FRAUDS AND FINANCIAL ABUSE

You hire a contractor to renovate your home but he walks off with your life savings and leaves you with an empty shell. You sign up with a company that promises to settle your debts, pay thousands of dollars but end up deeper in debt and more desperate than ever. You lose your job and contact your lender about modifying your mortgage but the banker ignores the law and evicts you from your home. The new documentary film “Stealing Trust” examines how bad things can happen to good people and what we can do to stop the financial abuses that cause such tragedies.

“Stealing Trust” channels the clear, eloquent voices of hardworking Marylanders who have lost their homes, their life savings and even their capacity to trust others to mortgage lenders, debt settlement companies and unscrupulous home contractors to offer an unusually powerful look not only at terrible toll predatory financial practices have taken on individuals and families across the state but at some of the ways consumers have successfully fought back.

Free screening:

• July 26 at 7 p.m. at the Montgomery County Civic Building, One Veteran’s Plaza, Silver Spring, MD.

The film is a sponsored by the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition as part of its work to protect the interests of Maryland consumers through education and advocacy and to ensure fairness and safety in the marketplace (www.marylandconsumers.org). It is co-sponsored by the Megaphone Project, a Baltimore-based media maker that amplifies the voice of under-served communities by producing film and media messages that inspire action and create social change. (www. Megaphoneproject.org).

For more information or media inquiries, please contact Franz Schneiderman at 410.624.8981