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I will call her Illysa as she is not ready to make her story public yet.
Her husband, Walt, a Marine Veteran of the war in Vietnam finally succumbed to the cancer believed by his doctors to be the result of his exposure to Agent Orange, three years ago.
Immediately after his death, his income from the military was cut off. She received a widow's pension and part of a life insurance policy and eventually found a temporary roommate which allowed her to keep up with the bills. She tried to return to the workforce after staying home during the last two years of her husband's life to take care of him. Last Fall when her roommate found a place of her own, Illysa knew she would not be able to keep up with her mortgage payments.
She contacted Wells Fargo after learning that as a condition of the two bailouts they had received, they had agreed to help 'keep people in their homes' by renegotiating their mortgage payments giving them a chance to get back on their feet. She met all four of the requirements listed on the government's page regarding this agreement.
In all she wrote six letters and made numerous phone calls. She received not a single response to any of her letters and was given a run-around every time she called.
It's hard to negotiate when no one will speak to you so she decided to send a partial payment of her mortgage, hoping that the non-response was the result of them having so many requests. The payment was returned to her.
Friends hearing about her situation managed to get her a lawyer. He called Wells Fargo and wrote to their attorney who was handling the fore-closure. Hard as it is to believe, he did not get anywhere either.
A few weeks ago, she received a notice saying her house would be sold on the courthouse steps. Her attorney wrote a letter to the judge, again attempting to stop the foreclosure until she had a chance to speak to the bank. There was no response to that letter either. She went to the court but there was no sale that day. And she learned later she had mistaken the date. Looking at the county records and public notices, we found nothing on her house, but saw that in that small area of upstate NY, there was a foreclosure notice almost every day. And the attorney handling many of them, was the Wells Fargo attorney who had refused to talk to her or her attorney.
She had also discovered that her mortgage had changed hands three times over the past number of years and that two of the lenders who had held her mortgage were listed with MERS raising the question of whether or not Wells Fargo actually held the note to her mortgage. But by the time she learned that information, things were moving so fast all she could do was mention it to the judge in her last letter to him.
On Nov. 13th, the day after Veteran's Day, an emotional day for her, she received another notice, telling her she must vacate the property in ten days. Not once during this entire process did a single representative of Wells Fargo even acknowledge her as a human being. They were made aware of her husband's death and of his service to this country.
I am not writing this asking for any help for her. It is too late for that now and although I did not go into details as it would take far too long, we, her friends and her attorney did all that we knew how to do to try to help save the home she and her husband bought together, and which meant so much to her.
I'm writing it merely to show how greedy and heartless these people are. How willing they were to take tax payer dollars when they could not pay their own bills, and then refuse to even abide by the conditions they agreed to to get that money.
Maybe someone reading this who has an account with them might think of cancelling it and telling them why. And the next time we head off to war and Wells Fargo decorates its banks with yellow ribbons and flags and 'Support the Troops' signs, ask them to remove them as I know Walt would do if he could.
Her husband literally gave his life for this country but he tried, before he died, to make sure his wife would have a home. The remainder of her mortgage, approximately $75,000.00 is pocket change to the Wall St. Corporate Welfare recipients.
Sorry, I'm angry today and I know that if her husband is anywhere where he can see what is happening to the woman he loved, he is in tears also, for her, and for what has happened to the country he loved. He was a wonderful person, a talented musician as she is.
I didn't write this very well, and hope to properly honor Walt in the future. Today I just wanted to show what greedy, uncaring, hard-hearted, compassionless bastards we the people gave so much money to when they screwed up. And how, in return, when the widow of a veteran loses her husband and needs a little time to get back on her feet, they would not even talk to her.
R.I.P. Walt we miss you ~ :cry:
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