Anyone who has ever moved from one residence to another probably has a tale to tell about an unscrupulous mover.

Here are a few stories gleaned from a federal fraud prevention video:

-- Susan Parr, who was moving from Washington to North Carolina, said, “The guy showed up and he said, ‘Do you have the cash?’ I said I’d be happy to write him a check, but he wouldn’t take a check.”

-- Ron Karlosky, going from St. Louis to Washington, D.C., had to pay $1,500 to get his household goods back, only to find many of them smashed.

-- Reana Kovalcik, relocating from Chicago to New York, said, “When your movers are five hours late, you’re concerned. When you can’t get ahold of your moving company, you’re concerned.” The end result for her was a bump in the price: from $900 to $2,000.

At the national level, a movers’ trade association has its antennae out for fraudsters, and wants to prevent consumers from being scammed. And a federal agency cracks down on any scallywag outfits it finds.

The American Moving & Storage Association (AMSA) has started a consumer protection and certification program called ProMover.

“The ProMover program promotes ethical principles in the moving and storage industry, and works with federal and state governments to mitigate unethical moving practices,” the AMSA says. “It clearly separates professional movers from rogue operators.”

At the same time, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) offers a wealth of knowledge for the 35 million of us who move every year.

FMCSA is a unit of the Department of Transportation, and its primary job is to reduce commercial vehicle crashes and fatalities. But it offers several resources to help stop moving fraud on its website (fmcsa.dot.gov) as part of its Protect Your Move campaign. For example, its look-up service allows people to research complaints against movers and obtain other relevant information, such as what kind of insurance the carrier has. Go to protectyourmove.gov, or call the FMCSA at 888-368-7238.

Here’s how rogue movers often operate, according to the FMCSA: “Without ever visiting your home or seeing the goods you want moved, they give a low estimate over the telephone or internet. Once your goods are on their truck, they demand more money before they will deliver or unload them. They hold your goods hostage and force you to pay more -- sometimes much more than you thought you had agreed to -- if you want your possessions back.”

Here are a few red flags that a moving outfit may not be reliable:

-- The mover doesn’t offer or agree to an onsite inspection of your household goods, instead giving you an estimate over the phone or online, sight-unseen. A reputable company will send out an agent who looks over your goods, going from room to room. They estimate the weight of the stuff you want to move, along with other important details, then provide a written estimate of the charges.

-- Bad guys demand cash or a large deposit before they’ll even show up. A good mover will want payment (in cash, or by certified or traveler’s check) when its crew arrives to pick up your stuff. Some movers also accept charge cards, but make sure you ask first.

-- Fraudsters sometimes ask you to sign blank or incomplete documents. Never sign anything that isn’t filled out completely, isn’t signed by the mover’s agent and doesn’t contain the mover’s address, phone number and licensing and insurance information.

-- Scoundrels won’t provide a written estimate, but will promise to determine the exact charges once the truck is loaded and weighed. Don’t bite. Once a bad guy has your goods on his truck, you are stuck. You’ll have to pay to get them back.

-- Beware if the company’s website has no local address and no information about their registration or insurance.

-- It’s a bad sign if a rental truck arrives, rather than a company-owned fleet truck. Remember, you can stop the move anytime something seems fishy, right up until the movers themselves actually enter your house. After that, if something has your antennae wiggling, call the police.

By law, all interstate movers are required to give you a copy of the FMCSA-prepared brochure called “Your Rights and Responsibilities When You Move.” But you can download the pamphlet in advance from FMCSA’s website and get some good information.

Also available on the site are the agency’s “Ready to Move?” brochure, and a checklist with suggestions such as checking potential movers with the Better Business Bureau, asking whether they are registered with the FMCSA and learning whether they have an official DOT registration number.

Remember, it is always better to be safe than sorry, especially when it comes to giving someone the responsibility of handling your property.

-- Freelance writer Mark Fogarty contributed to this report.

When Rodrigo Lopez snuck into this country 25 years ago, there wasn’t the controversy there is today about undocumented immigrants. He put down roots, becoming a homeowner in 2004.

Lopez (not his real name -- he’s actually a composite made from the stories of numerous immigrants) never had a Social Security number, which most homebuyers use to prove their identities to lenders. Instead, he used an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN, issued by the Internal Revenue Service to identify himself.

ITINs are issued to taxpayers who are not eligible to obtain Social Security numbers, regardless of immigration status.

At times, Lopez worked 60 hours a week. He paid taxes, just like everybody else. He paid his bills on time, always in cash because he didn’t have any credit cards, and put a couple of kids through college. And he never, ever got into trouble with the law.

Lopez bought his house with a mortgage from a Midwestern bank under a pilot program spearheaded by the Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Co. That initiative fizzled, largely because investors wouldn’t buy loans in which their borrowers’ legal residency hadn’t been proven.

Nevertheless, hundreds, if not thousands, of undocumented immigrants are still using ITINs to buy houses.

Government figures indicate that more undocumented immigrants are leaving the United States than are entering, but nobody knows for certain how many remain here. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) says 12.5 million people who’ve entered the country without authorization, or remained after their authorizations expired, still reside here. (According to the FAIR website, the group seeks “lower levels of overall immigration” but says that “immigration, within proper limits, can be positive.”)

Likewise, there is no official count of the number of lenders willing to write mortgages on behalf of undocumented immigrants. But Scotsman Guide, a monthly mortgage industry publication, lists 18 lenders who finance homebuyers on the basis of ITINs.

The IRS does not verify or validate information supplied during the ITIN application process, and neither do lenders who accept ITINs as identifiers.

Other than that, though, ITIN lenders check out potential borrowers -- vigorously.

“Nobody is trying to fool anybody,” says Raymond Eshaghian, president of Greenbox Loans, a Los Angeles-based lender that prides itself on the concept of “out-of-the-box” underwriting. “They have to qualify just like everybody else.”

Among other things, Greenbox verifies a minimum of two years’ tax returns and the applicant’s country of origin. “Just like the old days, you have to make common-sense lending decisions,” Eshaghian says. “Each application is analyzed, borrowers have to show they have the ability to pay, and you have to meet compliance requirements.”

Greenbox also charges for additional risk, currently 7 percent for a 30-year fixed-rate loan. For that, customers with ITINs can borrow up to $600,000 with 10 percent down if they have a credit score of 620 or higher, or 25 percent down if they have no score. But they need only 5 percent of their own money; the rest can come from family gifts.

Las Vegas-based Alterra Home Loans also charges higher rates to ITIN users, and wants 20 percent down. The company’s requirements include two years’ employment in the same or similar line of work and tax returns using the borrower’s ITIN for the preceding two years.

First National Bank of America in East Lansing, Michigan, offers ITIN loans in all 50 states. It wants at least 15 percent down (gift funds are allowed) and borrowers must document their income with tax returns or bank statements.

Not everyone favors allowing undocumented immigrants to become homeowners.

“It’s a form of insanity,” says Dave Ray, a spokesman for FAIR. “Any program that incentivizes illegal immigrants runs counter to federal law and undermines national security and public safety. If someone is here illegally, there has been no criminal background check or any other checks. They are a complete unknown.”

Eshaghian, however, says his ITIN clients are “excellent borrowers” and “very responsible.”

To that point, Guadalupe Credit Union in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reports that its delinquency rate among ITIN borrowers with auto loans and mortgages is 1.24 percent, compared to 1.85 percent for its entire portfolio. And the Latino Community Credit Union in Durham, North Carolina, which has 86 percent of its mortgage portfolio in ITIN loans, says its delinquency rate is 1.16 percent.

Both figures are far under the industry average of 4.63 percent as of this year’s first quarter, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Eshaghian of Greenbox says he understands there is “a lot of sensitivity” surrounding undocumented immigrants.

“You can say all kinds of negative stuff, but you have to look at these families closely,” he argues. “They are not criminals. They are not trying to take advantage of this country.”

As far as he’s concerned, “it really says a lot when people who could really hide” come out of the shadows. “They could continue going under the radar, but they live here just like me and you,” he says. “And they want to do the right thing.”

People searching for newly constructed homes on the popular Zillow and Trulia websites are not likely to find all the places that are available.

Zillow bills itself as “the largest, most trusted and vibrant home-related marketplace in the world.” But in early 2016, the Seattle-based company quietly stopped publishing listings from some of the country’s largest builders unless it was paid by the builders to add them.

Zillow, which owns Trulia, has contracts with most of the country’s 700-plus multiple listing services (MLS), agreeing to post every house listed by realty agents and entered into an MLS, whether resale or new construction. As long as agents opt in, their MLS listings will be sent to Zillow.

But the company has reversed course when it comes to new homes, saying that builders that sell more than 150 houses a year have to enter their listings directly with the site as part of its Promoted Communities program.

The company maintains that its motives were pure, in that would-be buyers craved more information about new communities and neighborhoods than what was available from the local MLS. By entering their offerings directly, builders could include as much information as they wanted -- for example, floor plans, community amenities and lot availability.

“We launched with the consumer in mind,” said Vice President of Builder Sales Lucy Wohltman, “allowing them to discover new construction listings more easily and earlier than ever before.”

But the policy change also became another revenue stream for the company. Most builders don’t put up anywhere near 150 houses a year, but many do. And by charging them $500 per subdivision per month to have those houses listed, Zillow stands to rake in millions for something it was once doing without charging builders anything.

The company won’t release the number of builder participants, or how much it earns from the program, but Wohltman says some 10,000 communities are displayed on the site.

Most builders contacted for this article refused to talk about the Zillow initiative, opting to sidestep any controversy. There is good reason to stay on the company’s good side: Most homebuyers today start their search online, and Zillow is a go-to site. Most builders seem to have capitulated to Zillow’s effort to squeeze money out of them.

But some builders have balked. Beazer Homes -- the 11th largest, according to trade publication Builder -- has said no, arguing that it has enough leads coming in from other sources.

The numbers tell the dissidents’ story. A builder who operates in, say, 12 different communities would pay Zillow $6,000 a month to list its houses. That kind of money puts a severe crimp in marketing budgets, or else becomes a cost passed on to buyers.

According to the National Association of Home Builders, only 8 percent of all builders sell more than 100 houses annually. Zillow asserts its program impacts “less than 10 percent” of the builders on its site.

But Texas-based Ben Caballero of HomesUSA finds that claim somewhat suspect. Pointing out that 10 percent of the country’s nearly 50,000 homebuilders erect some 90 percent of all houses, he says the change is nothing more than a “pay for play” ploy on Zillow’s part.

Caballero works with more than 60 Lone Star State builders. He lists their houses in their local MLSs, and when a client sells a house, he is credited as the listing agent. At last count, he found that 27 of his builder-clients in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and three in Houston, had refused to list directly with Zillow. Together, they build in 369 different communities. Two more clients have canceled their subscriptions to the initiative, and one is “on pause.”

Caballero has no quarrel with Zillow’s desire to provide consumers with more information. But he is angry about how the company went about the initiative. He didn’t find out about the program until one of his builder-clients called to ask why his houses weren’t listed.

“Zillow didn’t tell anyone -- not brokers and not the MLSs,” Caballero said in an interview. “They did it covertly. Only builders were told listings would be taken down” unless Zillow was paid directly.

“I don’t understand why they were so clandestine about it,” he added. “I have been telling my clients that when they list through me, their houses will be seen on all aggregation sites such as Zillow and Realtor.com. So I have been inadvertently misleading them because I was unaware of the change.”

Caballero isn’t the only one angry at Zillow; so is Georgia’s Kendall Butler of FLI Properties. She wasn’t told about the program, either, and only found out about it when the leads she had been receiving from Zillow slowed to a trickle.

Butler checked and discovered that Zillow had taken down listings from all three of the builders she represents, even though only one met the 150-home threshold. “They removed all my builders’ listings without telling us,” she said. “I called five times and I never heard back.”

The agent sees the program as a “money grab” that goes against two of Zillow’s claimed core values: transparency and putting the consumer first. None of her builders see the value in the program, she said, so they now have no listings on either Zillow or Trulia.

“They tried to force them in by removing all their listings. It seems like blackmail to me,” Butler said.

Zillow’s Wohltman said she “wouldn’t use the word ‘pushback’” to describe these grievances, adding that “it’s more like ‘confusion’” on the part of naysayers. “Builders can still publish their listings through their MLSs, but they will be buried (among listings for resale houses) if they don’t come through the paid platform,” she said.

Caballero said he contacted four MLSs in Texas, questioning “whether they had a unilateral right not to push (listings) through to Zillow,” he said. “But they said they had nondisclosure agreements with Zillow and couldn’t comment.”

Caballero also maintains that Zillow is haphazard when it comes to listings -- publishing some, but not all, builders’ offerings. One of his clients says the site lists 45 of his houses for sale, but not 27 others, and incorrectly lists 40 as “not for sale.”