A Collier County couple turns the tables on Bank of America, the bank that tried to foreclose on their home. Now, the family is foreclosing on the bank! Even bringing trucks and deputies ready to seize property.
The foreclosure nightmare started when Warren and Maureen Nyerges paid cash for a home owned by Bank of American in the Golden Gate Estates. They never had a mortgage whatsoever. But, the bank fouled it up and wound up issuing a foreclosure through their attorney.
The couple took their case to court and after a year and a half nightmare the foreclosure was dropped. A Collier County judge said Bank of America has to pay the couple’s $2,534 legal fees for the error. After more than five months the bank still hadn’t paid up. So, the homeowners’ attorney did just what the bank would do to get their money, legally seize their assets.
“I instructed the deputy to go in and take desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets, including cash in the drawers,” Attorney Todd Allen told WINK News.
Outside the Bank of America on Davis Boulevard, several deputies stood by with movers ready to start hauling out the bank’s office supplies and furniture.
What kind of lawyer only bills BofA for $2500 for a fraudulent foreclosure?
The same kind that would foreclose on BofA assets rather than return to court and get punitive damages.
Read another case where the Bank lost any claim to the property because of a faulty foreclosure. Course, in that case, there was a mortgage so the Bank had some skin.
Merely paying actual damages for multiple errors sworn to as accurate by an expert in the business like a Bank is simply not enough.
It might be the law though. Who knows?
Watch the oscar winning documentary Inside Job to see how Bank of America installed a terminal for mutual funds so a fund could front run.
Apparently they are above the law.
“Too big to fail” was caught cheating. Again.
Like most people feel, this is sweet justice indeed. I am looking forward to the usual gang that will blame the home owners for not paying their mortgage.
I still can’t understand how these banks knowingly gave loans to people they damn well knew wouldn’t be able to service them. I’ve watched the docos like Inside Job (brilliant by the way) and tried to follow the labyrinthine technicalities of the whole sub prime thing, but I’m still left asking myself “WTF are/were they thinking?”
I’m part way through Naomi Klein’s ‘The Shock Doctrine’ which is helping me to understand how the elites think and how they expect to get government funds to support their every action and mistake.
I don’t see any “grand plan” here. Just a bunch of immediate goal minded people lined up one after another with no regulators to stop them. Everyone getting their bonuses all along the ponzi scheme. If xyz business fails/goes bankrupt who cares as long as I have banked 2-3 years of bonus?
Its actually about as simple as you can get.
And still, no one in jail. Industry not broken up into smaller parts, not reregulated so that unvarnished gambling with other people’s money is not prohibited. That is about as simple as you can get too.
1.5 years of nightmare actions by the bank, lawsuit, win, no payment for 5 months + lawyer fees paid = monetary break even + Zero for pain and suffering + Zero for punitive damages.
I don’t see anything sweet, and no justice either.
“I still can’t understand how these banks knowingly gave loans to people they damn well knew wouldn’t be able to service them.
The how is simple. The assets they were “loaning” were completely phantom assets (what we call “credit”), secured by the Government, and if at the end of the day the loans were defaulted upon, the banks knew they could simply seize the property and turn it around for a nice profit. Real estate prices have been way overhyped for the past 30 years, allowing banks to lend what on paper look like high amounts, but in actuality was peanuts. So if they had to foreclose and turn the properties around for less than they were being sold, it was fine, because you could still turn a profit.
Problem is, everyone started doing it, which brought down the value of the assets, so that when it came time for the banks to pull out on all of their junk, no one wanted to buy, and they were left holding the bag.
The question you should be asking is “Why”, not “How.”
#7 Abberant
Exactly – foreclosure was quite profitable before the bottom fell out. 5 years of payments in the banks pocket, then sell the house to the next schmuck. Not to mention the financial shell game on the back end making the whole process a poor investment that the bank then bets against. Lots of sheep to be sheared.
There’s a very nice, apparently settled residential neighborhood a few blocks from where I live, and most of those houses are occupied by well off owners. Five years ago all those homes were purchased and occupied.
Now about 20% of those houses are empty. It’s all about people buying homes they couldn’t afford, and banks that now own the empty houses that are now foreclosed. The banks “won,” but not really because they own all these empty houses.
I have to agree with you Bobbo. Nothing sweet about a bank wasting someones time with BS. It’s amazing vast amounts of white collar workers have not gone to jail but it reminds me of the L.A. riots where the looting was so rampant they could never arrest all those people. The Korean-Americans were the only ones who came away in better condition than their neighbors because they were armed to the teeth. Something to think about.
Neener, neener!
GF–I don’t own a gun, but you are right. A riot/end of days/proselytizing Mormons is the only time I can think of that I would want one.
HEY!–that did make me think, then laugh.
Thank you.
Thanks for publishing this story. What banks, like BoA, have done to America is a travesty. How can the economy crumble as it did at the end of 2008 and NO financial managers are held accountable? A revolution, seriously, involving the physical storming financial institutions appears to be an action that may be a needed reality. It would be hoped the financial leaders of the nation would be intelligent enough and customer aware enough this is not needed, but BoA is sowing and germinating those seeds.
$2,534 for a 1 1/2 year foreclosure nightmare….?
How is that possible?
“After about an hour the bank finally cut a check to satisfy the debt, and no furniture was taken. A representative for Bank of America issued a statement saying they are sorry for the delay in issuing funds. They claim the original request went to an outside attorney who is no longer in business.”
Yeah, they’ve always got a scapegoat, that they can’t find anymore, who lost the paperwork. Why is it THEIR excuse always get them off. But the little guy can whistle all he wants, and the law and the court system still stomps on them. These foreclosures should fall under the “innocence until proven guilty” principle of US law. It certainly seems that what the big corporations use for a defense. Assets should be a hell of a lot harder to seize, than just having some paperwork that was made up out of thin air.
Is this what it has come to in the United States? Big finance can no longer wait for the collapse of the Middle Class. So it just starts seizing whatever it wants. And coughs up the appropriate phony paperwork, to justify it. Phony and fabricated foreclosures should be treated like counterfeiting currency or bonds. And yet big banks and Wall Street seems to be getting away with it. And then gets a bail out, to boot.
“Too Big to Fail”, really means too big to be foreclosed upon. And that’s because said institutions hold to many of the nations purse strings. Failure would lead to economic collapse, or so they say. And yet same said institutions don’t have to prove that they are financially stable or worthy of all that trust. Congress and the Fed just gives them greater license to do whatever they please. And post 2009, have we really seen any change?
“Is this what it has come to in the United States? Big finance can no longer wait for the collapse of the Middle Class.”
Pretty much a spot on assumption I would say. Just take a look around and you will see some shocking things going on in our country. Dead Peasants Insurance, The privatization of utilities like water,Orlando’s city council making it illegal to feed the homeless. And that’s just to name a few. Take a look at what happened in California with the rolling blackouts too. Essentially the power companies held the state hostage by creating shortages in order to inflate their rates for electricity. It’s a sick world out there I tell you.I highly recommend watching the documentary film “The Corporation,” it is one hell of an eye opener.
I wonder how many people, after reading this story, are contacting their lawyers to do the same thing? I hope this issue has motivated BofA to pay it’s debts. Big companies are all the same, they want their money “here and now”, but when it comes to paying their debts, it takes a month of Sundays to collect.
>how these banks knowingly gave loans to people they damn well knew wouldn’t be able to service them.
How do they know this? Presumably they are charging a higher interest rate because the people are less credit worthy. If I were buying a house I would be annoyed if a bank turned me down even though I could make the payments because it doesn’t meet someone’s calculations about what is an acceptable level of risk. Maybe I make $3000 a month, and I plan to pay $2000 in payments and live off $1000.
#17, When my “big customer” clients are late on their payments, we send them a nice late fee invoice.
In Red.
With another note that the next one is turned over to a collection agency.
We usually get the original amount then but not the late fee.
That’s ok, though. The late fee is just a club to get the coconuts.
To this day, I haven’t had to turn anything over to a collection agency.
Big companies will wait until the very last minute to send anything out. BofA used to wait SEVEN days before they cleared a check to us (way back when). When one of our checks bounced because they were dragging their feet on clearing another check, I simply went into the local branch and asked for a cashier’s check for everything I had in their accounts. The bank manager came over, asked why, and swore it would never happen again. It hasn’t.
You have to deal with these companies using their morals. I’m just a number on their books. I can live with that. But I also consider them just a number, too. I pay a monthly fee for their services so those services better be damned on time and hassle free.
Kudo’s the man in this article. I wouldn’t have waited so long.
B of A has a reputation around here of paying late. My son has his business account with B of A, and has had problems with getting his withdrawals in a timely manner. I hope he’s had the foresight to close his account with them by now…
In Florida, there’s been a freeze on foreclosure cases due to improper paperwork, robo-signers, etc.
Since there are so fewer cases being filed – and filing fees paid- the court system of Florida is on life support.
Banks don’t want to lend or refinance because the money from home borrowers is going to investors. The banks can make more money for themselves by servicing the foreclosure process. Regulators should have been more aggressive sooner.