"I did not lose my home, they stole it from me," explains Bertha Herrera, 63-year-old chaplain from Van Nuys, Calif. Bertha was evicted from her home of 32 years at gunpoint by LA County Sheriffs on Jan. 5, 2012. An hour later, with her possessions spread out over the lawn she'd tended since Jimmy Carter was in office, while a dozen Occupy LA and Occupy the Hood activists helped gather her belongings, 10 LAPD squad cars arrived to "protect and serve" the crew Coldwell Banker had sent over to board up her house.
Bertha had been late on one payment.
"There must be more to the story," you might insist. Yes, plenty more. But first, check your assumptions. Are you thinking the homeowner probably did something wrong? Or are you thinking the banks and auction house and Sheriff and LAPD probably did something wrong?
While many are still content to blame their neighbors for "buying too much house," many more are peeling back the curtain to see what has really happened to their neighbors.
Even if you don't own a house or you're not staring down foreclosure at this minute, don't think you can skip safely past the graveyards of U-Hauls and lockboxes. The sheer scale of the fraud calls into serious question who owns what in America. It has collapsed the economy surrounding you. All of this directly affects you. Whistling while plugging your ears won't work for long.
You can start to see the whole picture by taking in one story at a time. Here's Bertha's story:
In a nutshell, the bank used high pressure tactics to rush a signature on a loan modification for which they did not give her full documentation and flat out told her: "Don't send us any money for three months." When she skipped that first month's payment, the bank said she'd violated the agreement and started the foreclosure ball a-rolling. They refused to correct mistakes, delayed mailings and lied about the serving of paperwork.
Outrageous in itself, but that's not even the half of it.
The underbelly of the deceit is the stuff only mortgage geeks and auditors would understand. The banks hide mountains of fraud behind towers of mumbo-jumbo like "self-assigned" or "substitution of trustee." But there are plenty of plain old swindles to go around too such as destroying documents, misrepresenting products, forging signatures and magically recreating needed paperwork out of thin air.
A recent audit in San Francisco County by the county assessor-recorders office essentially declares foreclosure law to be extinct: 99 percent of foreclosures had questionable activity, 84 percent had a clear violation of law, and over two-thirds had four or more violations.
"Many of these actions, if not all of these actions, render many of these foreclosures invalid," said San Francisco County Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting. "California's foreclosure process appears utterly broken," says Lou Pizante, a principal at Aequitas, the consulting firm that performed the audit.
The families behind these statistics have had to struggle not only with the loss of their homes and life savings, but also with the heavy cloak of presumption of guilt that society throws over them.
"It's really a nightmare," says Bertha Herrera. "You think, 'I just need to go to this next person and they'll correct this obvious mistake.' There's always that hope... until you're evicted at gunpoint.
"It's like sleeping, dreaming, you want to wake up. When it looked clear that I wouldn't be able to hang onto the house, it's too late to make any arrangements, to pack, to look for another place. It's not the normal type of move where you pack slowly, label everything. It's all of a sudden, like a train wreck. There's not even time to get boxes. It's a horrifying experience.
"There's a lot of betrayal. You work a lifetime -- I was a social worker. I started up homes for women with addiction, was an advocate for children in the court system. I worked for women in domestic violence and for children with disabilities -- all this energy and effort for years and years.
"I arrived in this country in 1971 with one suitcase -- worked hard, saved up money. I put every penny back in my house to make it comfortable for me, my family, my grandchildren. You feel your country has let you down. The system that was supposed to be helping the people... by the people, for the people... is not there.
"You have stress, you're tired, then the adrenaline comes, then you collapse for a few days, you become lethargic. You wish you could become angry and throw punches, but who do you throw punches to?
"Who am I fighting against? They're hiding behind black walls. Everybody is helping them, no one is helping us. Judges help them, attorneys help them, government helps them.
"The bottom line is that there comes a time when there's nothing but despair.
"It is the most cruel form of abuse in the history of the U.S. -- if the government is helping the banks behind the scenes, may God have mercy on them.
"They may be getting rich -- anybody can rob and steal, that is not heroic -- that is a shameful blemish on the financial system of this country. If I were a wife of one of those bankers, I wouldn't even dare... how can they drive their fancy cars and wear their minks when they're destroying families?
"Anyone can be a delinquent, anyone can be a gangster -- they are nothing but gangsters.
"We have 13 million people having post traumatic stress disorder. When they wake up out of their mesmerizing experience and snap?... I would be very frightened.
"The hope that God is for justice... that's what keeps me together. The reason I continue to be a part of the [Occupy] movement is that I have grandchildren -- I want this nonsense to stop -- I want to see them have the promise of tomorrow, not this usurping, greedy system -- it may be a pebble in the pond, but it will cause ripples."
Follow Suzanne O'Keeffe on Twitter: www.twitter.com/suzanneokeeffe
I wonder if people will (if they ever did) see their home merely as a place to live and not as an investment, a retirement account, or leverage to borrow more money in the future? What's wrong with renting?
I grew up in Van Nuys. Houses in the late 70s cost $50,000. How come her house wasn't paid off or how come when she refinanced she has a balance she couldn't afford?
Wait these are common sense questions that require personal responsibility that the author clearly does not believe in.
The answer to "what bank" is also one of the problems I didn't have the space to really get into here. She had four different servicers in three years, so trying to figure out which bank to try and even get a hold of was a dodge strategy in itself by the banks. Turned out they were all sister companies of each other, but you'd never know that from talking to them. The loan itself wound up at Bank of New York Mellon -- at least that's who claimed to own it. They sold the house at auction to themselves. Interesting strategy isn't it? Did they have the legal right to do that? That's what Bertha's fighting right now.
Three hearings in 32 months and Wells Fargo still has not presented a scrap of paper proving they have the note, title, or are even the servicer. Their rep, by phone, did tell the hearing the second time, that he had all that on the desk, in front of him. Mediator reminded him originals were to be in front of us in Reno, not him in San Antonio.
This problem is so wide spread as to be unimaginable. SF assessor Ting's investigation should be required viewing by everyone.
A light at the end of the tunnel??? Only if Obama is 1) re-elected, 2) gets rid of the last of the Rubinites in government service, including no Summers at IMF. 3) Surrounds himself with people that want to fix things. Not much hope for that happening. 4) Get Holder out of Washington and replaces him with Eliot Spitzer. I've been watching Schneidermans twitter site and not a word of the federal investigation promised. 5) The teapartiers must be run off in Nov if anything good is to take place in our future.
The "lender/ investor" lost their equity in my home not mine. I did nothing to bring on this debacle. They did it all. They need to take their damn medicine and find honest work.
Jtenn is also right "This problem is so wide spread as to be unimaginable. SF assessor Ting's investigation should be required viewing by everyone."
And I for one am sincerely grateful for the John O'Brians and Mr Tings of this world as it makes the judges and trustees ability to pretend the banks are not the robbing fraudsters that they are virtually impossible. I would think that at some point the judges would be embarrassed to be made fools of. And no matter what the situation of the homeowner it still is criminal fraud that the banks are guilty of, right? I read on opinion by a Supreme Court Judge from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that noted that fact. Smart Man.
MA Foreclosure Bill 830:
Please email/call Senator Michael Moore telling him that he was elected for the public office to represent the people, not the bankers who have committed the biggest fraud against this nation and its people!
email: Michael.Moore@masenate.gov
phone: (617) 722-1485
http://boston67.blog.com/mortgagefraudclosure/
CA - 150 vs 1100 days.
NY - 400 vs 800
MD - 205 vs 600
CT - 300 vs 700
NJ - 450 vs 900.
Notice that all these absurdities are in rabidly pro-Obama states.
Still, the only victims here are TAXPAYERS and the PRUDENT. Everybody else in this disaster is a freakin' free rider, including every banker and borrower.
NYTimes: Speculators Who Inflated Property Bubble to Get U.S. Loan Help: Mortgages
By Prashant Gopal - Mar 5, 2012 12:00 AM ET
"The Obama administration will extend mortgage assistance for the first time to investors who bought multiple homes before the market imploded, helping some speculators who drove up prices and inflated the housing bubble."
"Bhattacharya said he doesn’t understand why the government should be subsidizing workouts for property investors who are in the business of making money on their purchases. Vacancies are unlikely to increase if the houses go into foreclosure and are purchased by owner-occupants or new investors who fill them with tenants, he said."
"The eviction from their million-dollar home could come at any moment. Keith and Janet Ritter have been bracing for it — and battling against it — almost from the moment they moved into the five-bedroom, 4,900-square-foot manse along the Potomac River in Fort Washington.
In five years, they have never made a mortgage payment, a fact that amazes even the most seasoned veterans of the foreclosure crisis.
The Ritters have kept the sheriff at bay by repeatedly filing for bankruptcy and by exploiting changes in Maryland’s laws designed to help delinquent homeowners avoid foreclosure.
Those efforts to protect homeowners have transformed Maryland’s foreclosure process from one of the country’s shortest to one of the longest. It now takes on average 634 days to complete a foreclosure in Maryland, compared with 132 days in Virginia".
Who is taking advantage of who??
So you equate the Ritters with Bertha Herrera? What a despicable argument. Go kiss a banker.