The Home Equity Theft Reporter Cases & Articles: Reports Of Alleged Illegal Home Break-Ins By Lenders Continue; Deceased Owner's Cremated Remains Among Items Taken, Says One Lawsuit Against BofA

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Reports Of Alleged Illegal Home Break-Ins By Lenders Continue; Deceased Owner's Cremated Remains Among Items Taken, Says One Lawsuit Against BofA

The New York Times reports:

When Mimi Ash arrived at her mountain chalet here for a weekend ski trip, she discovered that someone had broken into the home and changed the locks. When she finally got into the house, it was empty. All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter clothes and family photos. Also missing was a wooden box, its top inscribed with the words “Together Forever,” that contained the ashes of her late husband, Robert.

The culprit, Ms. Ash soon learned, was not a burglar but her bank. According to a federal lawsuit filed in October by Ms. Ash, Bank of America had wrongfully foreclosed on her house and thrown out her belongings, without alerting Ms. Ash beforehand.(1)

In an era when millions of homes have received foreclosure notices nationwide, lawsuits detailing bank break-ins like the one at Ms. Ash’s house keep surfacing.(2) And in the wake of the scandal involving shoddy, sometimes illegal paperwork that has buffeted the nation’s biggest banks in recent months, critics say these situations reinforce their claims that the foreclosure process is fundamentally flawed.

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In Washington, Celeste Butler went to check on her father’s house after he spent months in the hospital and ultimately died. “The house was ransacked,” Ms. Butler said, adding that it had been neatly maintained beforehand. “They had destroyed furniture, broken into china cabinet. They had looted jewelry.”

In her lawsuit, Ms. Butler is accusing Safeguard, a contractor for JP MorganChase, of breaking into her father’s house. Ms. Butler asserts that Chase failed to properly credit payments made when she switched to an automatic system in June 2009, but that she and the bank worked quickly to rectify the problem.

Officials at Chase said its contractors, dispatched to inspect the house when payments were late, found it in disarray. When no one responded to a letter asking if the property had been abandoned, Chase said, its crews went back in the house to put antifreeze in the pipes.

For the story, see In a Sign of Foreclosure Flaws, Suits Claim Break-Ins by Banks.

(1) Go here for links to other reported Bank of America foreclosure screw-ups.

(2) For the lawsuit in this case, filed in California, see Ash v. Bank of America.

Earlier media reports reveal that the same Massachusetts lawyers representing Ms. Ash in this case has filed similar illegal foreclosure & lockout cases on behalf of screwed-over homeowners in other parts of the country. See:

Bank admits mistake on Willcox home foreclosure (involving an Arizona homeowner) (for a copy of the resulting federal lawsuit, see Newman v. Bank of America, N.A. and go here for the attached Exhibits),

Family's recently purchased home, gutted by property removal service (involving a Michigan homeowner) (for a copy of the resulting federal lawsuit and accompanying Exhibits , see Rought v Deutsche National Trust Company, Trustee, et al.),

Couple: Bank Foreclosed On Wrong House (New Bedford Couple Suing Bank Of America) (involving a Massachusetts resident with a home in Florida) (for a copy of the resulting federal lawsuit, see Cardoso v. Bank of America, et al.).

For those homeowners who've been screwed over by wrongful lockouts by foreclosing lenders (and their confederates) and seek some possible guidance on how much their cases might be worth if they seek to sue, see: