An Oregon jury in 2004 returned a verdict against Beneficial Mortgage Co. for defrauding a Spanish-speaking Portland couple. The lender sold the couple an overly expensive loan by taking advantage of their lack of knowledge of English.

"We did not know what we were signing," Panfilo Vasquez-Lopez said through an interpreter. "They told us one thing and that is not what we signed. They lied to us. We thank the jurors for telling the truth."

Panfilo Vasquez-Lopez and Maria Dominguez own a home in Northeast Portland. They were seeking a loan for a new roof when they encountered an agent for Beneficial Mortgage Co. The agent, speaking Spanish, made several promises to get them to refinance their home with Beneficial. The homeowners were told the new loan would match the rate of the loan they had, seven percent, and their taxes and insurance would be covered by the monthly payment as it was in their existing loan. The loan papers were in English and neither Vasquez-Lopez nor Dominguez can read or write English. They also have difficulty reading and writing Spanish. The promises made turned out to be false. The new loan was written at a rate just below 13 percent. If the couple had stayed with the new loan, it would have cost them $140,000 more than the mortgage they already had. In addition, taxes and insurance were not covered by the monthly payment. The couple discovered they had been cheated when Multnomah County sent them a notice that their taxes had not been paid. They took their case to a jury, which returned a verdict against the company and for the couple. The jury awarded the couple the money lost in the lending scheme and also punished the company with an award of $500,000 in punitive damages.

By state law, 60 percent of the punitive damages goes to the Oregon Crime Victims' Assistance Fund.

Vasquez-Lopez and Dominguez are wage earners who make about $7.50 an hour from manufacturing jobs. When they were making payments on the Beneficial loan, their monthly principal and interest payment was just over $1200, equal to 44 percent of their combined monthly wages.