Chase overcharges troops on mortgages

This story makes me wonder if this practice was deliberate because they felt as if they would never be caught?  And here is even more evidence that Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s statement that no-one is getting foreclosed upon that shouldn’t be is complete crap.  Here are more than a dozen families that WERE incorrectly foreclosed upon.

NBC News

updated 1/17/2011 5:22:50 PM ET 2011-01-17T22:22:50

One of the nation’s biggest banks — JP Morgan Chase — admits it has overcharged several thousand military families for their mortgages, including families of troops fighting in Afghanistan. The bank also tells NBC News that it improperly foreclosed on more than a dozen military families.

The admissions are an outgrowth of a lawsuit filed by Marine Capt. Jonathan Rowles. Rowles is the backseat pilot of an F/A 18 Delta fighter jet and has served the nation as a Marine for five years. He and his wife, Julia, say they’ve been battling Chase almost that long.

The dispute apparently caused the bank to review its handling of all mortgages involving active-duty military personnel. Under a law known as the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), active-duty troops generally get their mortgage interest rates lowered to 6 percent and are protected from foreclosure. Chase now appears to have repeatedly violated that law, which is designed to protect troops and their families from financial stress while they’re in harm’s way.

A Chase official told NBC News that some 4,000 troops may have been overcharged. What’s more, the bank discovered it improperly foreclosed on the homes of 14 military families.

“We are deeply appreciative of those who fight to protect our country and Chase funds a number of programs that provide benefits to military personnel and veterans, and while any customer mistake is regrettable, we feel particularly badly about the mistakes we made here,” Chase chief communications officer Kristin Lemkau said in a statement to NBC News.

She said that beginning this week Chase will be mailing a total of about $2 million in refunds to families that may have been overcharged. She says most of the families improperly foreclosed on have gotten or will get their homes back. A bank official described what happened here as “grim,” but emphasized the mistakes were inadvertent, not malicious.

The news comes as millions of Americans are struggling to keep their homes. Banks have come under fire for allegedly improperly foreclosing on homes across the country.

This wasn’t brought to light by Chase’s own internal investigation UNTIL they were sued by one of the wrongly charged customers.

Update:  Chase has agreed to refund $2,000,000 to the customers involved, which pegs the amount of overcharge at $500 per customer.

Chase doesn’t want to help homeowner get current

Wow.  Here’s a homeowner who just wants a simple letter from Chase so they can move to get their mortgage current again.  Weeks of trying and the best excuse Chase can come up with is that they don’t have a single fax machine sitting around.  This might be one of the clearest examples yet of Chase intending to drive someone into foreclosure.

I have been trying for weeks just to get a 401k letter from these people. Every time I talk to collections, they tell me that they have mailed a new one, but then 10days goes by and nothing. Today I finally got tired of this. I talked to Customer Service to see if they could fax me a letter, but they are not able to access the 401k letters so they sent me to collections for help. HA!!

I spoke to “supposed” supervisor Angel in the collections department and he told me that they have no capability to fax in his entire office. When I asked for his manager he told me that he was the manager of the entire building. A building which apparently doesn’t have a fax machine. After repeated attempts to get some thing anything on paper he said the best he could do was mail me a letter. (Like the last three letters that I haven’t received I suspect.) Then he said he would transfer me to customer service and some how I got hung up on. (Who knew?)

This is crazy, are these people just trying to wait me out and foreclose. I am only 3 months behind, but if they would give me the letter I can get caught up and should be able to keep up from here. This is driving me crazy, these idiots seem to be able to get people to my house to drive by and take pictures but they can’t get me a stupid piece of paper that gets them paid.

What am I supposed to do?

This is why Chase is evil and not stupid

We received this story from a reader today:

There is so much to say. We were on a 3 month trail agreement that went to 14 months I was calling, faxing, leaving messages. I always called the Loss Mitigation dept. They said just keep on making ur payments ok this past Aug 2010 We did a phone financial & I did fax all the infor. the same day too. Just keep on making ur payments if we need any thing we will call u. So I went into chase to make our Dec. 1 2010 modification payment they would not take it 🙁  it is SUSPENDED in FORECLOSURE!!!! What? I ask chase to call for me!! They told me that. WHAT the HELL chase did not call me fax me email fed ex me nothing. I was told Mr. Vahe said that Laurel Lindsey got my case after 14 months on this trial modification we were paying on time calling all the time, where is our permanent workout solution for our loan cause the trial has been completed + ? O This Laurel Lindsey only had our case for 5 DAYS, now there saying we have been 19 months past due What? we were on a mod. & b for that we had to FILE BANKRUPTCY for a modification we had to much debt. I will be back…… Please help me help

NJ Supreme Court spanks Chase and other banks

Things are getting more difficult in the foreclosure arena and today’s announcement by the New Jersey Supreme Court isn’t helping Banks.  The Court has basically demanded that the banks prove their foreclosure process and documentation is correct and will not result in incorrect foreclosures.

Ouch! for the banks, good for the rest of us.

Chase hit with SEC whistle-blower suit

A former employee embroiled in a wrongful termination suit against Chase has filed a whistle-blower suit with the SEC.  Either she is trying to bully them into settling her case, or Chase went ahead and fired someone who knew where the bones were buried, in which case, note to Chase, when someone knows all the stuff you’ve done that is illegal, you might want to keep them on the payroll.

1. Chase Bank sold to third party debt buyers hundreds of millions of dollars worth of credit card accounts. . .when in fact Chase Bank executives knew that many of those accounts had incorrect and overstated balances.

3. Chase Bank executives routinely destroyed information and communications from consumers rather than incorporate that information into the consumer’s credit card file, including bankruptcy notices, powers of attorney, notice of cancellation of auto-pay, proof of payments and letters from debt settlement companies.

4. Chase Bank executives mass-executed thousands of affidavits in support of Chase Banks collection efforts and those Chase Bank executives did not have personal knowledge of the facts set forth in the affidavits.

5. When senior Chase Bank executives were made aware of these systemic problems, senior Chase Bank executives — rather than remedy the problems — immediately fired the whistleblower and attempted to cover up these problems.When I reached Almonte’s lawyer, George Pressly, for comment, he was shocked that I had the letter because it was supposed to be confidential. While Pressly was willing to confirm Almonte was a client, beyond that he had no comment. Pressly, who was clearly trying to figure out how to handle the letter’s disclosure, said he was suddenly getting a “firestorm” of calls and seemed unprepared for the onslaught. While he has filed many SEC complaints before — he operates the website http://www.secwhistleblowerprogram.org/, which is how Almonte found him — her letter is the first one he’s filed that went public.

If this suit is successful, homeowners fighting foreclosure will have lots of ammunition to contest their own foreclosures.

Chase goes criminal?

This comment one one of our posts was so good it deserves a post of its own.

Yes – JP Morgan Chase and Washington Mutual illegally robbed us of our million dollar horse farm in RI by first ignoring every effort to pay it off, sell it, short sale it, refinance it to us or to our buyers, over a two year period that we paid our full huge gigantic mortgage,  but then our attorney was notified of a foreclosure 90 minutes before the foreclosure sale where no one showed up but me! Instead of letting us sell it – like they said – they grabbed it themselves.  The next day while we were at a wedding, they broke in, stole everything we owned, changed the locks, and lied to the police chief – “No one lived there, the place was empty, and the door was left opened!”

SCUM BAGS TO THE MAX _ WE want to sue them.  Our case is 100% exceptionally well documented.  Anyone know of a class action suit involving RI?

Chase claims they don’t lose paperwork. Yea right.

In what may be the biggest fib yet by a Chase spokesman, as quoted in a Bloomberg Business Week Article (Modifications Aren’t Stopping Foreclosures) Chase claims:

JPMorgan is able to track paperwork because it scans every document as it’s received.

In truth, Chase is one of the worst offenders when it comes to paperwork lost during the loan modification process as evidenced by the many many stories on our site and in the press, and it is disappointing that Business Week didn’t take them more to task for this.

However, the article does outline the basics of the scam Chase and the other large banks are perpetrating on borrowers:

1. Borrower is granted a trial modification with lower payments.
2. Borrower makes all trial modification payments on time and in full.
3. Bank denies permanent modification and demands difference between trial modification payments and regular mortgage payments in one lump sum.
4. Borrower can’t pay this so bank forecloses.

If you are lucky enough, there are a couple of extra steps as evidenced by the Business Week article:

1. Major news media writes an article profiling the borrower.
2. Bank has a miraculous change of heart, reverses the foreclosure, and gives the borrower a permanent modification.

Are false foreclosures more widespread than banks will admit?

Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has publicly stated that despite the foreclosure paperwork problems, no one is loosing their home that doesn’t deserve to.  Is it possible that JPMorgan Chase’s CEO doesn’t have a clue how bad the problem really is?

According to Diane Thompson of the National Consumer Law Center, who testified before the Senate Banking Committee this week, 10% of the foreclosure related cases her office handles involve borrowers that weren’t even default on their loans.  She believes that lost paperwork and other issues are causing homeowners who are current on their loans to be brought to court for foreclosure.

If that is a fair representation of all foreclosure activity, this is a HUGE problem waiting to see the light of day.

Given that Chase is one of the largest mortgage servicers, it seems unlikely that it alone would have a perfect record of never foreclosing on people who were current on their loans while it was a widespread problem at other banks.

Perhaps Jamie Dimon is in for a real surprise when he finds out what is really going on with his bank.

Time to short Chase?