Bias commission orders lawyer to pay $233K for targeting Hispanics in ads touting 'secret formula'
A bias commission in Massachusetts has ordered a Revere lawyer to pay $233,000 for targeting Hispanic clients in ads for mortgage modifications and then providing “substandard service.”
The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination cited evidence that lawyer David Zak considered Hispanics to be “easy targets,” report the Daily Item, the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald. The commission ordered Zak to pay $116,000 in damages to 17 homeowners, $107,000 in emotional distress damages to 12 homeowners, and a $10,000 fine.
Zak’s ads in Spanish and Portuguese claimed he had a “secret formula” and “magic numbers” for obtaining loan modifications, according to MCAD hearing officer Sunila Thomas-George. She says Zak charged Hispanic clients inflated fees for services available elsewhere for free and provided “substandard service,” according to the stories reporting on the decision.
Zak says he plans to appeal. “These were a series of misunderstandings that were between me and a very small group of clients, and they were whipped into a frenzy,” he told the Daily Item. “It was a series of misunderstandings that were inaccurately labeled as discrimination. It could not be that I harbor those views because then no one would come to me.”
