Bank Of America Accused Of Breaking Into Woman's Home, Taking Husband's Ashes

Bank of America has seen easier days. The bank been reportedly identified as a target by WikiLeaks -- it reportedly maintains a war room to defend against the leak -- it's the subject of a federal racketeering lawsuit, one of many high profile lawsuits involving its foreclosure practices.

Now, the bank has been accused of breaking into a woman's home and taking her possessions, including her late husband's ashes.

The New York Times details the claims of struggling homeowners like Mimi Ash, who is one of a growing set of a Americans who believe they have been mistakenly foreclosed upon. In a lawsuit filed in October, the NYT reports, Ms. Ash claims she was behind on payments on her Truckee, California home and was in the process of working out a mortgage modification with Bank of America when the bank seized her home and possessions.

Ms. Ash says she endured years of delay from the Countrywide (now owned by Bank of America) representatives she worked with to modify her mortgage. But her efforts couldn't stop foreclosure process. Here's the NYT (read the full piece here):

"This is in essence a burglary," said Ms. Ash, walking through the vacant home, with its four levels and commanding mountain views. "But when a burglar goes in, they don't take your photos and your husband's ashes."

The reports of banks improperly entering homes have been gathering in recent months. In October, ABC News reported that banks had been using repo men to break into Florida homes. In some cases, firms hired by banks had entered homes that were not in foreclosure. Check out ABC News' report from October below:

Comments

[AlsoSarah]

03:46 PM on 12/27/2010

I am so sick of this. I went into a 3 month HAMP trial with BoA in June 2009. In August I was told I was modified as of November 2009. Today I called to check my status. I have still not been officially modified although BoA continues to report me delinquent to all the credit bureaus and pad my mortgage with fees and late charges. Today when I spoke with a BoA supervisor he told me that BoA will take care of all the fees and late charges when they modify me. THEY WILL ROLL IT ONTO MY MORTGAGE PRINCIPAL. yeah, that means that since Novemember 2009 they have been padding my mortgage LEGALLY. What's wrong with this picture? is this fraud?

[MikeyJaii]

11:29 PM on 12/26/2010

If we bond together we can stop it. We're to divided as Americans.

[dwilli1]

01:27 PM on 12/29/2010

I agree. We need to come together and stop doing business with these banks. My daughter and I closed our Chase account. We moved everything to my Credit Union. Americans lets take a stand and show the banks we are not going to be victims of their fraud! Lets come together and make the government press charges against the bankers who committed this white collar crime, which is the biggest ponzy scheme in history!!!

[MyResponsibility]

04:45 PM on 12/24/2010

Why no link to the lawsuit itself?  And why is it a federal suit?  Theft is not a federal crime, and even if it were, it wouldn't be a lawsuit, it would be a criminal investigation.  Even foreclosure falls under state jurisdiction, not federal.  None of her claims appear to be under federal jurisdiction...Peculiar indeed...

[MyResponsibility]

02:39 PM on 12/24/2010

this story is full of Ms. Ash's claims.  She will have her day in court.  But one thing is abundantly clear - that is that although she claims to have been attempting a mortgage modification, everybody who understands the modification process KNOWS that it would have been a failed attempt.  NO bank will modify a mortgage on a home that is not your primary residence.  Not even under the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, where a bank has an incentive to modify a mortgage, will they modify a home in which the mortgagee does not live.

She admits to not making a payment after tendering $15,000 in ARREARS  in 2005 because, as she said, she didn't own the home.  The Probate proceeding would have determined how this property would be managed.  She never did assume the mortgage, either. 

Her loss of her husband was tragic.  But the loss of this mountain chalet, and all that she left in it whilst rarely visiting it, is not tragic, it was predictable.

[Darlie Brewster]

05:30 PM on 12/25/2010

You are completely wrong, the bank aknowledges it was a mistake:

"Identifying the number of homeowners who were locked out illegally is difficult. But banks and their representatives insist that situations like Ms. Ash’s represent just a tiny percentage of foreclosures. "

Discussion over.

[MyResponsibility]

10:12 PM on 12/25/2010

Ah. The 'smoking gun.' problem is, your quote is evidence of nothing. BOA didn't say what you quoted, Andrew Martin, the NYT writer wrote that. Reread the quote.

[Doc P]

08:04 PM on 12/23/2010

If anyone with "Bank-Thug" infestations would like a "house-sitter", i would be honored. Perhaps we cannot stop this underhanded activity, but we can cause the banks to pay out the nose for "services". Afterall, when "services" include hospital recovery, funeral services, and limb reattachment...theyll get quite "pricey", indeed!
Perhaps bank honchos need visits at home, at their childrens schools, wives' social gatherings...make 'em pay where it counts.

[Fiscalprudence]

12:16 PM on 12/24/2010

Tough guy on a blog site. Idiotic statements. The fact that you're condoning violence, actually encouraging violence, is simply moronic.

[gorideabike]

04:40 PM on 12/23/2010

Ashes from Ash...

[djsketox]

04:26 PM on 12/23/2010

You act as if this is their first tarnish. Their failure to vet Barack Obama and complete and utter devotion to the Democratic party ruined their reputation years ago.

[BeautifulOnDaOutside]

03:43 PM on 12/23/2010

It sounds as if the house was actually in the estate of her late husband: "Hearing nothing from the bank for many months and not having ownership of the house, she made no more payments, she said."
Nor was she living in the house: "When Mimi Ash arrived at her mountain chalet here for a weekend ski trip..."
I don't really think you can blame the bank on this one, other than having agreed to a loan modification (a good thing), and then subsequently bungling it.
You have to feel sympathy for a woman who has lost her husband to violence, but I just don't see any malevolence on the bank's part.

[Darlie Brewster]

05:53 PM on 12/23/2010

I'm confused, WHAT DON'T YOU GET ???!!! These banks are using systematic foreclosures on not only the poor people they suckered into loans , they told them they can afford (packaging them into bundles, selling off the risk , then using "puts" to bet against the defaults which they knew was illegal, stealing the homes, getting the bailouts and making us pay interest on the money we borrow from them to pay them ) but on people they KNOW are unaware of any problems. If you can't see a problem with stealing from old people /? That doesn't make you feel anything ? My god we have sunk to pathetic state.

These banks are committing fraud, stealing homes illegally, taking bailout money for banking fraud they caused. Tell me, with 4 million foreclosed homes on the market , why haven't you seen massive price drops in homes. Tell me we are a capitalist country again.

[BeautifulOnDaOutside]

07:25 PM on 12/23/2010

Where did I write that I didn't get it? I was commenting on this specific story.

I am certainly not going to defend all the practices of the banks, although the worst abuses actually occurred at mortgage originators such as Countrywide, which the banks were stupid enough to later acquire (with federal government prompting, of course).

Lenders should not have loaned money to people who could only pay by refinancing, and who could only refinance if real estate values increased. They should not have made stated income (liar) loans. They should not have made loans to people who could only afford artificially low teaser rates. They should not have made pay option ARM loans.
And neither should borrowers have taken out loans they knew they could not pay back.
The Federal Reserve had the power to stop all these practices, but they did not.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should not have lowered their underwriting standards, but they did.

In my area, home prices have dropped by at least a third from the peak, and they will go lower still.

[Chester Erickson]

01:38 PM on 12/26/2010

I was also bothered by some of the details of this particular case.

The funny thing is, the banks always end up looking bad because the news only covers one particular angle.

Just this week I've seen four cases where this kind of problem was avoided, because the banks were doing a good job of avoiding a mess.

In these cases, a new contractor mistakenly found that a house was vacant. Crews were issued orders to secure and winterize the properties, but when they got there they saw enough indicators of occupancy to stop the process and request more information. The bank issued an order for a thorough recheck by another contractor, and it was resolved quickly and no damage was done.

During the same week, I saw more than 10 cases where the homeowners had actually abandoned the property and disconnected the gas and electric. No heat in a cold climate means that pipes will freeze and burst, and mold will start to grow. A few houses with significant mold damage can reduce the neighborhood property values significantly, causing more homeowners to find themselves with negative equity.

There are too many horror stories out there, and the process is not perfect. It's horrible that homes are ransacked and property is taken. But in most of the cases that I have personally seen (not just read about in a news article), the homeowner causes far more damage on the way out than the banks ever could.

[merger]

01:16 PM on 12/23/2010

This is the new terrorism. Homeland Security where are you? Eventually, we will have to take this matters into our own hands if the govt doesn't step in. Class warfare!

[Eris23Skidoo]

12:12 PM on 12/23/2010

This is one of those situations where you should shoot them for coming into your home unannounced.

[Pamela Fenton]

10:28 AM on 12/23/2010

this happened to me too- they ruined my house, and destroyed my belongings - agonizing at countrywide then BofA - I tried everything until exhausted! I have no understanding how our local, national leaders let these financial institutions/corp. lobbyist's get away with what they do and why - they should have given each american the bailout money, bottom up would have worked better - almighty dollar can 'buy' our governement-peroid - I simply just gave up out of complete exhaustion and disgust and moved-then spent a long time trying to re-gain my 'energy' to move forward. ( just to add another.. *look at the FDA - another mess - ) our entire system is full of cracks - and the cracks are full of dirt , and all is slowly crumbling. thank god for wiki leaks love it! and Michael Moore!!! a voice at least!!!

[soisay]

12:33 AM on 12/24/2010

You remind all of us that these issues are not conceptual, they happen to real Americans. Our neighbors, our friends, and at the drop of a hat it could be each one of us. It might be losing your house, or an illness without health insurance for medicines or care, inability to school your children, loss of reliable transportation, access to reliable food.

I wish for you the best outcome, and carry you in my thoughts at this holiday season.

[treemonkey]

10:29 PM on 12/25/2010

Thanks. People need to hear your story, and you could use your first fan. f&f.

[bart4u]

09:14 AM on 12/23/2010

How come these bank higher ups are not in jail for breaking in this woman's home. This is sick.

[Eris23Skidoo]

12:14 PM on 12/23/2010

Apparently, burglary is okay if you're the well-connected. If that bank was a black man from New Orleans they would have shot him cold and called him a looter. Speaking of which, since we shoot looters on sight, no questions asked, I think it might be time to start doing so to those who are looting our treasury and economy.

[Siebenstein]

07:29 AM on 12/23/2010

I would like to suggest to have another subsection on HP just devoted to banking practices.
How about that?

Take on the 4 big banks, BoA, JPM Chase, Wells, and Citi, devote a site to their practices, so we can follow step by step how they screvv everybody, and shed more light on them.

[lrobb]

06:22 AM on 12/23/2010

Not just Bank of America. Have 2 mortgages on rental properties with Chase. Payment had always been automatically drafted until I changed banks and cancelled it. Set up new automatic drafting from new checking account. Bank drafted payments for both properties but only credited them to one account.

Got delinquency notices. Called bank, They acknowledged error and fixed it on next statement. Then I got a notice of impending foreclosure because "the property is vacant." Evidently, having a vacancy in a rental property is now cause for foreclosure.

However, the property was not vacant and had been rented by the same person for over seven years. Electric meter was clearly running. Chase's contractor had gotten the wrong property
when they "checked" it due to the delinquency caused by Chase's posting mistake.

Chase informed my insurance company the property was vacant, which is evidently a violation of the terms of the insurance. Insurance sent cancellation notice to bank and myself which I successfully fought and got reinstated. Bank immediately put their own inflated-cost insurance on the property without sending me any notice of same.

I have had to hire an attorney to fight foreclosure and imposition of duplicate insurance on a property where the mortgage was never paid even a day late in ten years, and has never been vacant except for 24 hours in that entire period.

This isn't Facism. At least Mussolini made the trains run on time. This is sheer incompetence complicated by laziness and stupidity.

[DomainDiva]

09:46 AM on 12/23/2010

I am moving all of my business accounts out of Chase in 2011. I will keep one checking account that our house payment is drafted from. I know that as soon as I put another calculation into the mix...things will not be good. Hope your lawyer is able to get this fixed for you and that you are able to be reimbursed for your legal fees...time and trouble...that's another story as you well know.

[Eris23Skidoo]

12:20 PM on 12/23/2010

I wouldn't rule out fascism. Maybe the difference between our situation and WW2 era Italy is that Mussolini was competent and made it a point to make the trains run on time. Maybe our system is incompetent because it doesn't even acknowledge that it is fascist. Maybe much of the govt doesn't even know. This whole thing seems too well orchestrated to be an accident. I think the banking class has decided that this is the time to have a great big land grab. They think because they have lawyers they can just steal everyone's property.

Everybody, take your money out of banks and put it in credit unions. Banks need to go the way of the dinosaur.

[lrobb]

07:39 AM on 12/24/2010

Moved my money to a small local bank a couple of months ago. Which is why I cancelled my automatic drafting with Chase and started the whole problem.

[EileenMac]

04:46 AM on 12/23/2010

Just more proof that centuries of Real Property law and Constitutional protections (ie the Bill of Rights mean nothing anymore. Welcome to the New American Feudalism of the haves and haves not.