Revenge is Sweet - Customers Foreclose on Bank

[Coito ergo sum]

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - Months after Bank of America wrongly foreclosed on a house Warren and Maureen Nyerges had already paid for, they were still fighting to get reimbursed for the court battle.
So on Friday, their attorney showed up at a branch office in Naples with a moving truck and sheriff's deputies who had a judge's permission to seize the furniture if necessary. An hour later, the bank had written a check for $5,772.88.

"The branch manager was visibly shaken," attorney Todd Allen said Monday, recalling the visit to the bank last week. "At that point I was willing to take the desk and the chair he was sitting in."

After the moving company and sheriff's deputies get their share, the Nyerges should receive the rest of the money this week, ending a bizarre saga that started when they paid Bank of America $165,000 cash for a 2,700-square-foot foreclosed home in Naples in 2009.

About four months later, a process server knocked on their door and handed Warren Nyerges a notice of foreclosure.

"This is a big mistake," he recalled saying. "You must have the wrong house. We bought a foreclosure and don't have a mortgage."

That started 18 months of frustrating phone calls, paperwork and court hearings. Whenever Nyerges called the bank, representatives told him to "come up to date" with his payments. When he called 25 different law firms, no attorney would take the case. When he went to court, the lawyers for the bank filed incorrect motions and were woefully unprepared for the hearings.

"It was mind boggling," said Nyerges, a 46-year-old retired police officer. "To try to unscrew the screw up, it's not as easy as it sounds."

Eventually the Nyerges found Allen. They fought the foreclosure and won, proving that they owned the home outright.

During his research, Nyerges heard that his name got transposed from purchase agreements onto the prior foreclosure.

"I don't know if that is a fact, because no one really had the facts," he said.

In September 2010, a Collier county judge ordered Bank of America to pay the couple's $2,534 attorney fees. But by last week, the bank hadn't paid up, so Allen got a judge's permission to seize assets.

In an email to the Associated Press on Monday, Bank of America spokeswoman Jumana Bauwens apologized to the couple about the "delay in receiving the funds."

"The original request went to an outside attorney who is no longer in business," she wrote.

The law office of David J. Stern, which handled the Nyerges' case for Bank of America, told judges across Florida in March that it will end its involvement in 100,000 foreclosure cases.

The Florida attorney general's economic crimes division is investigating three law firms, including Stern's, over allegations that they created fraudulent legal documents, gouged homeowners with inflated fees, steered business to companies they owned and filed foreclosures without proving the bank actually had legal interest in the loans.

According to employee testimony filed with Florida authorities, Stern's employees churned out bogus mortgage assignments, faked signatures, falsified notarizations and foreclosed on people without verifying their identities, the amounts they owed or who owned their loans.

The attorney general is also looking at whether Stern paid kickbacks to big banks.

Allen sees the entire mess as symbolic of the foreclosure crisis. Courts are backlogged, and banks and their attorneys aren't scrutinizing foreclosure paperwork.

And Nyerges said he's still upset with Bank of America.

"They couldn't even spell our name right in the apology," he said.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id ... _article=1

[Feck]

Nice !

This is old news but of a similar nature

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/975012.stm
A farmer who repeatedly sprayed a bank with manure during a decade-long dispute has called off his protest.

David Cannon's decision comes after his disagreement with NatWest ended with the bank agreeing to pay more than £300,000 in an out-of-court settlement.

[Seth]

The best way to resolve most of the debacles of the mortgage bailout is to pass a law that says that a) whomever is asserting ownership of a house in foreclosure must produce the ORIGINAL document with the borrower's signature on it before being allowed to file a foreclosure claim; and b) that in the future, no home loan may be sold or transferred outside of the state in which the residence lies.

This "local loan holding" requirement would prevent the bundling of mortgages into "securities" in the first place, and would force banks to keep both the mortgage (the original piece of paper) and the income from the mortgage local, within the state of origin.

I'd add to that a requirement that ALL home mortgages must be recorded with the county clerk and recorder at the time they are made, and that the recording must include not only signatures, but FINGERPRINTS and photographs of not only the borrowers, but of the persons who sign the loans for the bank, so that they can be identified accurately in the future. No mortgage or amendment to a mortgage that is not properly filed and filled out would be permitted as evidence in any court action.

Oh, and I'd have gone ahead with the foreclosure on the bank, since once they defaulted the plaintiff was under no obligation to allow them to "cure" the default with a check. I'd have had the sheriff haul everything out and sell it at auction. That would have shut the bank down, cost it hundreds of thousands in fees and expenses, embarrassed the bank, gotten the manager fired, and cost it who knows how many customers.

[Coito ergo sum]

The best way to resolve most of the debacles of the mortgage bailout is to pass a law that says that a) whomever is asserting ownership of a house in foreclosure must produce the ORIGINAL document with the borrower's signature on it before being allowed to file a foreclosure claim;

There already are such laws. "Produce the Note" is defense number one in any foreclosure matter.

and b) that in the future, no home loan may be sold or transferred outside of the state in which the residence lies.

That seems like overkill. That would mean that only large 50-state lenders can buy loans. All states require any lender that does more than a couple of isolated transactions in a state to be licensed and maintain a brick-and-mortar location in the State in which they are doing business. So, for all intents and purposes, Bank of America is "in the State of Florida" and every other state.

This "local loan holding" requirement would prevent the bundling of mortgages into "securities" in the first place, and would force banks to keep both the mortgage (the original piece of paper) and the income from the mortgage local, within the state of origin.

I'd add to that a requirement that ALL home mortgages must be recorded with the county clerk and recorder at the time they are made,

Banks always do that. The only people that don't record them are individuals who hold notes and mortgages.