Banks Accused of Illegally Breaking Into Homes

In a Sign of Foreclosure Flaws, Suits Claim Break-Ins by Banks

TRUCKEE, Calif. — 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.

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. 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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/business/22lockout.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

The banksters will dismiss this as merely the cost of doing business.

And if I were on the jury, it would be.

in my community. He was elderly, in the hospital, his payments were current and JPChase took it upon themselves to winterize his home to preserve their investment. They hired Safeguard who "allegedly" (because it is going to court) changed the locks on his home and took everything of value and left the place ransacked.
They said the reason they did this was because they sent him correspondence that was not answered.
He died and his daughter is suing. Good for her.

What the hell is going on?

even when you pay your mortgage faithfully:

TheRealNews | December 20, 2010

Yves Smith: Mortgage service industry makes more money from foreclosures than restructuring debt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2LSiP99QtA

Yves explains it very well.

free and clear. Their places were paid off and yet somehow, they find themselves battling a bank in foreclosure court. Here's just one example:

Ricky Rought paid cash to the Deutsche Bank National Trust Company for a four-room cabin in Michigan with the intention of fixing it up for his daughter. Instead, the bank tried to foreclose on the property and the locks were changed, court records show.

Sonya Robison is facing a foreclosure suit in Colorado after the company handling her mortgage encouraged her to skip a payment, she says, to square up for mistakenly changing the locks on her home, too.

Thomas and Charlotte Sexton, of Kentucky, were successfully foreclosed upon by a mortgage trust that, according to court records, does not exist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/business/28victims.html

I'm sure Google can turn up a lot more stories like the ones above because I've seen many of them over the past couple of years. Apparently the banks have decided they can foreclose on whoever they want whenever they want and there's diddly-squat the victim can do. In fact, what's more lucrative: foreclosing on a house that's underwater or foreclosing on one that's paid for? And if you haven't been served notice that the bank is foreclosing on you, how would you know? You wouldn't, and as a result, you would "default" in court. The bank then "owns" your house and once the foreclosure ball starts rolling, good luck stopping it.

Of course, after losing your house and all of its contents, you could take the bank to court but you will never get your house back, much less your belongings. They might give you a "settlement" but how much is it really worth to you to be wrongfully kicked out of your house with no notice and have everything you ever owned gone? Losing irreplaceable photos is bad enough but a loved one's ashes??? That alone should result in life in prison with no possibility of parole. But hey, it's the banksters that run the country so they will go scott free whereas a parent caught stealing baby formula or a teen caught stealing a pair of jeans would serve time in the county jail.

Every goddamn one of the Banksters and Wall Street Barons needs to be put in prison. Until that happens, nothing will change in this country. And since the people in DC don't want to "bite the hand that feeds them" by putting their major donors in jail, I don't expect that to "change" anytime in my lifetime or the next, regardless of political slogans. The only thing that will bring about real "change" is the complete collapse of the US economy. Until then, we're fucked and after that, we'll be fucked for a time but hopefully something better will arise from the ashes.

Too bad it has to come to that but any chance of "rebuilding the system from within" is long gone and it's never coming back.

They want it all. Every last little bit. They will not stop until they have stripped us of everything.

out and out thievery - in plain sight.

This is beyond madness

:kick:

Bank of America is an underwriter of PBS. PBS should drop them no matter how much they need the money.
Larceny should not be tolerated or supported in any way. This includes programs such as NOVA, which I watch
all the time and Ken Burns "Baseball". These programs should not be made on the backs of people being burglarized
of all their possessions.

I speak very rarely on DU, but this event really hit me.

How much more crap do the corporations have to throw at them before it happens?

DADT passes START passed and the 9/11 responders bill passed. We should be singing and dancing in the streets.

Riddle me this Batman, If corporate crimes never get punished, are they really crimes?

Meanwhile, you can be arrested and go to jail simply for having a Sharpy marker in your possession while on private property. If you are poor, a Sharpy is implement of vandalism, and mere possession of it makes you a vandal, and therefore a felon.

Never mind that there are many legal reasons to own a Sharpy marker, and there should be a presumption of innocence, so you should presumed to be a law abiding person carrying a legal consumer product until and unless someone proves you have done something illegal. But simply because you are poor and/or a minority that presumption of innocence disappears. Gone!

The legal consumer product becomes an implement of vandalism solely because you are poor and/or a minority. Owning a common consumer product becomes possession of tools of the trade for vandalism solely because you are poor and/or a minority. And this could be enough to get a conviction.

That is justice in the US for the rich and for the poor. Rich people can steal tens of millions, destroy people's homes, and walk away richer. Poor people don't have to do much of anything and end up in the criminal justice system for years. :(

of us.

Tear up its corporate charter, seize and nationalize its assets, and ban its officers and directors from ever holding those positions in any other company (including after their twenty year prison sentences).

Never again.

been.