1/12/08 Deschutes County
By: Brian MacMillan
 
Deschutes County is sending out a warning after an unusual phone call to a local woman.
 
"A gentleman had reached her and said he was from the internal control department at Deschutes County. Well, we don't have a department called that," says county spokeswoman Anna Johnson.
 
The man wanted to do a mandatory risk assessment of her home.  The woman wrote down the phone number and called Deschutes County to report it.  We called the phone number which turned out to be a company in Los Angeles named The Fair Lending Program Evaluation Center.
 
They perform risk evaluations on home loans.  We talked with an associate that would not give us his name who says, the company does not misrepresent itself.  "We tried to clarify with her that we did not indicate that we were not calling from her county, we were calling in regards to her county," says the employee.
 
In the past, there have been five complaints against the California company for aggressive or misleading tactics.  The Better Business Bureau says those complaints have been resolved.
 
"Not only are we clear about who we are, we provide a great service to people. We've saved so many people's homes," says the employee.
 
If you ever get a suspicious phone call, make sure you ask a lot of questions, like where they are from and exactly what they do.  Make sure you get their contact information as well.  As for this case, the county says, it just wants to play it safe.
 
"We do know that this person is in business and we know that he is contacting folks in the area and so we want to make sure that they're all protected, just in case," says Johnson.