The Banks Show No Mercy: 10 Foreclosure Horror Stories That Will Blow Your Mind
During the last housing crash, the big banks begged the federal government for help and they received it, but when average Americans ask the big banks for help most of the time the banks show no mercy whatsoever. If you fall behind on your mortgage payments, the big banks have shown that they are willing to be absolutely ruthless. They will change locks in the middle of the night, they will toss disabled veterans and families with children out into the street in the middle of winter, and sometimes once the foreclosure process has begun they will not even allow someone to come forward and offer to pay off the loan if they think that they can make more money by selling the home. The big banks will often string homeowners along for months or even years with loan modification promises, only to drop the hammer on them at the most inopportune time. Over the past several years there has been case after case where mortgage documents have “disappeared”, where big banks have “manufactured” missing documents out of thin air and there have even been cases where big banks have tried to foreclose on homes that do not even have a mortgage. Once in a while, the big banks get a small slap on the wrist, but nobody ever really gets into much trouble for any of this. In fact, the big banks just continue to gain even more market share and even more power. Hopefully when some of these foreclosure horror stories start to become publicized more widely we will start to see some real changes in the marketplace.
The following are 10 foreclosure horror stories that will blow your mind…
#1 If you get behind on your mortgage, your family might be tossed into the street at gunpoint in the middle of the night…
This week, Christine Frazer and her family were thrown out of the Atlanta home they’d lived in for 18 years, at gunpoint in the dead of night.
They were not set upon by robbers, but by the Dekalb County Sheriff’s department, which evicted the family at the request of Investors One Corporation. As Steven Rosenfeld reported for AlterNet, it was the fourth company to buy the family’s mortgage in eight months.
#2 Time after time we have seen authorities show absolutely no mercy when conducting these evictions…
It was bad enough when 62-year-old disabled veteran Ramsey Harris was evicted from a foreclosed house on Jamaica Lane where the former owner had been letting him live.
Then it started to rain as all his worldly possessions sat in a heap by the side of the road and Harris noticed some of his valuables were missing.
“It was just ugly,” Harris said Friday. “I was just broken-hearted. I couldn’t believe what was happening to me. I ended up standing, watching all my life’s work go down the tubes.”
#3 Sometimes financial institutions will promise you a loan modification for many months and then turn around and foreclose on you anyway…
When the economy crashed and his business slowed down, Wells Fargo offered to modify Steve Bailey’s loan to lower his payments. After making a series of trial payments, Wells Fargo notified Steve that his modification was on the way.
A few days later he received a letter stating that his modification had been denied. The Wells Fargo representative he spoke with reassured him that they had made a mistake and that he should keep making the payments, which he did for seven months.
Steve then started to receive foreclosure notices. Again, the bank representative assured him that the notices had been sent in error.
Then Steve checked his credit. Wells Fargo had reported him delinquent on his mortgage for the last six months. The reduced payments that Steve had agreed to pay for the previous months had been put into a separate trust by Wells Fargo, and they had not gone towards his mortgage.
Steve took the case to court but lost despite mountains of evidence in his favor. He lost his home and his business.
#4 Other homeowners have found themselves trapped in loan modification hell for years…
I am self-employed, have been all my life and have owned a home for 30 years. When I started my Loan Modification process in August of 09 I WAS NOT behind on any payments. I sent full documentation, over 150 pages, with the things they needed to verify my income. I am now 2 payments behind and I am getting nowhere. They keep flipping me between Loss Mitigation and Imminent Default, back and fourth month end month out. I made a habit of calling every week, then every two weeks just to be sure all was moving forward. From the middle of November I was told my file was with the underwriter and it would only be 30-60 days. I began automatically updating my income verification, verification that I still resided at the property and an updated 4506-T every month. In the middle of April a rep finally told me I was not in the loan modification process. In fact, that I had been denied on March 2. Keep in mind, I’m talking to these people every 2 weeks. She did a financial interview and sent me a new packet so that I could start all over, resubmitting all the documentation yet again. She told me she was my Account Manager. I completed the packet, called with a question (2 weeks later – over a week to receive the packet and another few days to complete it and gather all my documents again) and learned that my “Account Manager” was on maternity leave and I now didn’t have an account manager. Also, I was told that I had received the incorrect packet…it was the old version rather than the updated version. She asked me to fax four or five pieces of information in the hopes it would, quote, “jump start my file back into the process” and said she we send me another packet. That was mid April. Here we sit, 2-1/2 months later, I have still not received anything in writing about my rejection. And, though I’ve now had people tell me on three separate occasions that I would receive a new packet, it has yet to show up on my door step. I asked several times why my application was denied and the answer I finally got last week was that it was because I was DELIQUENT in my payments. Call me crazy but I thought that was the whole point??!! I almost hired a third party but am so hesitant to take that step. Every time I get on the phone with them it takes an hour out of my day and I am usually so upset I find it difficult to work, so I just don’t call. I’m going to sit back and regroup and decide what I need to do next.
#5 Sometimes a big bank will kick someone out of their home and then never actually take possession of the house. As a result, many former homeowners now find themselves stuck with thousands of dollars of unpaid bills. For example, a recent CNN article told the story of Rose Nathan, a 37-year-old office manager…
Nathan lost her South Bend, Ind., home in January 2009, after working out a deal with CitiMortgage to voluntarily walk away in a “deed in lieu of foreclosure.”
“On Christmas Eve, the bank called and told me a sheriff’s sale was coming and I had to move out right away,” she said. “So that’s what I did — seven days after New Year’s.”
She sold her belongings and moved to Hawaii. Nearly two years later, she received a property tax bill from the City of South Bend for $5,000. The bank had never taken possession of the house.
These unpaid taxes that she didn’t even know about have absolutely destroyed Nathan’s finances…
Meanwhile, the unpaid debt has crushed Nathan’s credit score. The deed-in-lieu alone lowered her score by 80 to 120 points, but the unpaid debt meant her credit kept taking a hit. Eventually her credit card companies cut her off, even though she said she was making her payments.
Her auto loan now carries a 25% rate. Her car insurance premiums have skyrocketed. She can only afford a one-bedroom apartment where she lives with her three kids. And forget about buying another home. “Nobody will give me a mortgage,” she said.
#6 Sometimes a big bank will decide to foreclose on you even when you have been making all of your payments. Just check out what real estate agent Mark Conca went through with one major bank…
He decided to approach his lender, Bank of America, to see if he’d qualify for a modification. After he applied, many months passed and Conca heard nothing from the bank. Knowing lenders had huge backups in modification requests, he remained patient.
Conca, 41, continued to make the full payment on the mortgage for his Caldwell home, on time, every month.
But that’s not what Bank of America said when it sent Conca a letter about its intent to foreclose.
“I would have been better going to a loan shark and borrowing all that money,” Conca said. “At least with the street mafia, you know where you stand.”
#7 Sadly, the customer service at many of these large financial institutions is almost non-existent. In fact, sometimes representatives from these companies will literally tell you that they won’t lift a finger to help you…
After a car accident Kathryn Nava wound up on disability and had trouble making her mortgage payments. She had a friend who was willing to help her make her back payments, but that friend wanted to see a payment history before giving her the money. Nava called her mortgage lender to request that history—and was told it would cost her $50 per hour, and take 90 days to receive it.
So she tried again, calling the president of the company. She got a voicemail response that shocked her so much she recorded it and saved it.
“Let me enlighten you, Kathy. First of all, there’s nothing in your contract with us says we owe you any history, now, next year, five years from now or the next time…I’ve begun foreclosure today. I bet you’re sorry now that you made that phone call. I don’t need to put up with your crap, OK?…Bottom line, I’m doing nothing for you now.”
Indeed, she did end up losing her home.
#8 Sometimes the big banks will try to foreclose even when you paid cash for your house and you don’t even have a mortgage…
Charlie and Maria Cardoso are among the millions of Americans who have experienced the misery and embarrassment that come with home foreclosure.
Just one problem: The Massachusetts couple paid for their future retirement home in Spring Hill with cash in 2005, five years before agents for Bank of America seized the house, removed belongings and changed the locks on the doors, according to a lawsuit the couple have filed in federal court.
#9 Dealing with these big banks is so incredibly frustrating that some homeowners have completely snapped. For example, one very frustrated homeowner in Ohio decided to crash his SUV into his own home…
30-year-old Steve Doak told deputies he was recently served with foreclosure papers and wanted to destroy the house rather than turn it over to the bank. The sheriff’s office says Doak drove the vehicle into fencing and then into the rear of the house
#10 Another very frustrated homeowner literally bulldozed his own home…
“The average homeowner that can’t afford an attorney or can fight as long as we have, they don’t stand a chance,” he said.
Hoskins said he’d gotten a $170,000 offer from someone to pay off the house, but the bank refused, saying they could get more from selling it in foreclosure.
Hoskins told News 5′s Courtis Fuller that he issued the bank an ultimatum.
“I’ll tear it down before I let you take it,” Hoskins told them.
And that’s exactly what Hoskins did.
Meanwhile, the big banks that are doing all of this continue to receive billions of dollars in assistance from the federal government. The following is from a recent Bloomberg article…
When JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon testifies in the U.S. House today, he will present himself as a champion of free-market capitalism in opposition to an overweening government. His position would be more convincing if his bank weren’t such a beneficiary of corporate welfare.
To be precise, JPMorgan receives a government subsidy worth about $14 billion a year, according to research published by the International Monetary Fund and our own analysis of bank balance sheets. The money helps the bank pay big salaries and bonuses. More important, it distorts markets, fueling crises such as the recent subprime-lending disaster and the sovereign-debt debacle that is now threatening to destroy the euro and sink the global economy.
Sadly, when the next wave of the economic crisis strikes, we are probably going to see millions more foreclosures and thousands upon thousands of more stories just like these.
So what do you think about all of this?
Do you have a foreclosure horror story to share?
Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below…
There Is A Staggering Amount Of Feces In Our Food
Most Americans are eating significant amounts of feces on a regular basis without even realizing it. You might not mind this, but most people out there would not willingly eat feces if they could avoid it. Not only is it disgusting, but feces is also a breeding ground for all kinds of dangerous diseases. Unfortunately, as a result of the never ending quest to cut prices even lower more of our food is being imported from overseas than ever before. Many of those countries do not have the same health standards that we do in the United States. In fact, many farmers in those countries actually feed feces to their fish and to their animals since it is so inexpensive. If you are eating seafood that was imported from Asia, there is a very good chance that it was raised on pig feces. Not only that, the truth is that a lot of the poultry that comes from Southeast Asia is also raised on pig feces. The FDA has rejected thousands of food shipments from Asia in recent years due to fecal contamination, but the FDA inspects less than 3 percent of all imported food. So what are we to conclude about the other 97 percent of all food imports that the FDA did not inspect?
A recent Bloomberg article entitled “Asian Seafood Raised on Pig Feces Approved for U.S. Consumers” explained that much of the seafood that is imported to the United States from Asia is actually raised on pig feces.
A lot of people were grossed out by that article, but there have been no calls for a congressional investigation. There have been no calls to cut off food imports from Asia. Most people will forget about all of this in a few weeks and will continue to consume large amounts of imported crap.
The Bloomberg article also talked about the fact that less than 3 percent of all imported food is inspected by the FDA…
About 27 percent of the seafood Americans eat comes from China — and the shipments that the FDA checks are frequently contaminated, the FDA has found. The agency inspects only about 2.7 percent of imported food. Of that, FDA inspectors have rejected 1,380 loads of seafood from Vietnam since 2007 for filth and salmonella, including 81 from Ngoc Sinh, agency records show. The FDA has rejected 820 Chinese seafood shipments since 2007, including 187 that contained tilapia.
If the FDA has found such widespread contamination in seafood coming from Asia in recent years, shouldn’t something be done about it?
If nothing is done, Asian seafood companies will continue to send us boatloads of seafood contaminated with feces knowing that there is more than a 97 percent chance that a particular shipment will not be inspected.
According to Michael Doyle, a microbiologist from the University of Georgia, using feces to feed fish and shrimp is quite common in Asia. Many fish and shrimp that we eat spend their entire lives swimming around in a disgusting pool of animal feces…
It said most of the cases of contamination involving imported food in the U.S. are related to exposure to fecal matter. The group cited how, in Thailand, chicken coops with as many as 20,000 birds are often suspended in rows above ponds used for farming shrimp and fish. The sea life feeds on the chicken waste that falls in the water.
In an interview, Doyle said food producers in China regularly use untreated human and animal waste for feeding farmed fish meant for eating and for fertilizing land to grow produce.
“(Feces) is the primary nutrient for growing the tilapia (in China),” he said.
Sounds yummy, eh?
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, pig manure is also often fed to poultry and sheep in Southeast Asia as well…
Pig manure is important in the pig-vegetable-fish-duck chain that is common in Southeast Asia. The integrated system has long profitably used by Chinese farmers (ref. 306).
Swine manure contains over 20% crude protein. Because of this high content of crude protein, dried fresh swine manure has been used in experimental work as poultry feed with no adverse effects on either meat or eggs. The same product has been used to advantage in pig finishing rations at the 15% level. It has also been included in sheep rations at the level of 40% (in pellets) with good results.
They say that you are what you eat.
Do you really want to eat something that has been constantly feeding on pig poop?
But feces is not just a problem in imported food.
According to the FDA, food producers in the United States are allowed to have an average of 9 mg or less of “rodent excreta pellets” in the wheat they produce per kilogram. So, for example, 8 mg of “rodent excreta” per kilogram is perfectly fine.
And there are many other ways that our food becomes contaminated with feces. The following is from an article that describes other ways that feces may be getting into the meat that we eat…
Slaughterhouse workers or more often machines take the hides off cattle. If workers cut the hides off by hand, they can spread feces to the meat if their knives touch the hides or tails and aren’t sanitized before touching the exposed meat again. Hide—removing machines may fling feces off the hides and onto exposed meat.
If workers accidentally break an animal’s gastrointestinal tract while removing it, feces or vomit may contaminate the meat. In beef and pork, each end of the tract needs to be sealed off with plastic to keep the contents from leaking out. Workers or tools can accidentally contaminate meat during this process.
After chickens are slaughtered, the birds are often chilled in cold water rather than in refrigerators. Feces and the pathogens in them can spread from bird to bird through the water.
Are you getting hungry yet?
But not all farmers feed poop to their animals. Others feed them candy, sugar snacks and expired food. The following is from a recent article by Ethan A. Huff….
The Vancouver Sun reports via Reuters that a whole new “alternative” feed market is emerging out of the ongoing crop crunch, as farmers all across the U.S. are running out of common feed options for their herds. Because corn-based feeds are now too expensive or simply unavailable, feedlot operators in Indiana, North Dakota, and elsewhere are buying leftover candy scraps, pastries, extruded cereals, gummy snacks, and even food waste to feed to their cows, which end up directly fueling the production of conventional meat and dairy products sold nationwide to American consumers.
No wonder so many Americans are deciding that it is worth it to pay more for organic food these days.
Even if you avoid all meat completely that does not mean that you are safe from fecal contamination either. For example, according to CNN one study found that nearly half of all soda fountain machines in one area of Virginia were contaminated by fecal material…
It fizzes. It quenches. And it could also contain fecal bacteria.
Nearly half of the 90 beverages from soda fountain machines in one area in Virginia tested positive for coliform bacteria — which could indicate possible fecal contamination, according to a study published in the January issue of International Journal of Food Microbiology.
Researchers also detected antibiotic-resistant microbes and E.coli in the soda samples.
So will the day eventually come when they will try to directly feed us feces?
Unfortunately, that day may be closer than you may think. In Japan, they are already working on a method to create “meat” out of human feces.
Yes, I know that this is hard to believe. The following comes from an article posted on DailyTech.com…
The Tokyo Sewage service in Japan serves over 13 million people over approximately a 2,200 square kilometer area. It approached Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, with an unusual problem — it had too much “sewer mud” (also known as human excrement).
It turns out human excrement is a breeding ground for scores of bacteria. So Mr. Ikeda cooked up an unusual solution – make food [video] out of the feces.
The first step is to cook the bacteria, killing them, and to extract their proteins via separation techniques according to Yahoo News. Soy protein is added to enhance the flavor. The meat mixture travels to a “reaction enhancer” (likely a chemical reactor of some sort) where it turns into a textured “meat” and is then extrude through an “exploder”.
The delicious “steak” is even finished with red food color to give it a comforting hue. Mr. Ikeda claims that in initial testing people found the feces steak to taste somewhat like beef.
So would you mind eating a feces “steak”?
Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below…
Gassing Up: Executive Summary
Gas prices have again passed $3 a gallon. But Americans should be used to high prices by now – the mainstream media have been warning them of $4, $5 and even $6 a gallon for more than two years. According to a May 7, 2007, CNN poll, “more than three quarters of Americans” think they'll have to pay more than $4 a gallon this year. It’s no wonder. The media have been telling viewers that for years.
Gassing Up: Executive Summary
Gas prices have again passed $3 a gallon. But Americans should be used to high prices by now – the mainstream media have been warning them of $4, $5 and even $6 a gallon for more than two years. According to a May 7, 2007, CNN poll, “more than three quarters of Americans” think they'll have to pay more than $4 a gallon this year. It’s no wonder. The media have been telling viewers that for years.
Gassing Up: Executive Summary
Gas prices have again passed $3 a gallon. But Americans should be used to high prices by now – the mainstream media have been warning them of $4, $5 and even $6 a gallon for more than two years. According to a May 7, 2007, CNN poll, “more than three quarters of Americans” think they'll have to pay more than $4 a gallon this year. It’s no wonder. The media have been telling viewers that for years.
Gassing Up: Executive Summary
Gas prices have again passed $3 a gallon. But Americans should be used to high prices by now – the mainstream media have been warning them of $4, $5 and even $6 a gallon for more than two years. According to a May 7, 2007, CNN poll, “more than three quarters of Americans” think they'll have to pay more than $4 a gallon this year. It’s no wonder. The media have been telling viewers that for years.
Gassing Up: Executive Summary
Gas prices have again passed $3 a gallon. But Americans should be used to high prices by now – the mainstream media have been warning them of $4, $5 and even $6 a gallon for more than two years. According to a May 7, 2007, CNN poll, “more than three quarters of Americans” think they'll have to pay more than $4 a gallon this year. It’s no wonder. The media have been telling viewers that for years.
Gassing Up: Executive Summary
Gas prices have again passed $3 a gallon. But Americans should be used to high prices by now – the mainstream media have been warning them of $4, $5 and even $6 a gallon for more than two years. According to a May 7, 2007, CNN poll, “more than three quarters of Americans” think they'll have to pay more than $4 a gallon this year. It’s no wonder. The media have been telling viewers that for years.
A Surprising Number Of Americans Believe In Conspiracy Theories – And Many Of Them Are Actually True
Let’s take a look at some of the results of the Public Policy Polling survey about conspiracy theories. Excerpts from the results are in bold, and my comments follow thereafter…
“37% of voters believe global warming is a hoax, 51% do not. Republicans say global warming is a hoax by a 58-25 margin, Democrats disagree 11-77, and Independents are more split at 41-51. 61% of Romney voters believe global warming is a hoax”
The planet has been warming up and cooling down for thousands of years, and most “climate change” can be directly attributed to the gigantic ball of fire that our planet is revolving around. Even if “greenhouse gases” did play a significant role in “climate change”, the truth is that carbon emissions make up less than 5 percent of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and human activity accounts for less than 5 percent of all carbon emissions. So to suggest that “global warming” could ever be significantly influenced by reducing carbon emissions is absolutely laughable.
“6% of voters believe Osama bin Laden is still alive”
They rapidly dumped his “dead body” into the ocean and the American public has still never seen any of the pictures that supposedly show that Osama bin Laden is dead. Are we just supposed to trust our politicians when they tell us that the U.S. military killed him? After all, our politicians lie for a living. Plus, the truth is that there is a tremendous amount of evidence that bin Laden died many years before the now famous Seal team raid on a compound in Pakistan.
“28% of voters believe secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government, or New World Order. A plurality of Romney voters (38%) believe in the New World Order compared to 35% who don’t”
Whether you want to call them “the New World Order” or “the Illuminati” or “the global elite”, the truth is that nobody should be able to deny that there are ultra-wealthy individuals that are seeking to dominate the planet. If you doubt this, please see the following article: “Who Runs The World? Solid Proof That A Core Group Of Wealthy Elitists Is Pulling The Strings“.
“20% of voters believe there is a link between childhood vaccines and autism, 51% do not”
At one time I didn’t believe that there was a link either. But then I started looking into the evidence for myself. Why do they make us feel like criminals for asking questions about this? Is it because it threatens billions of dollars in pharmaceutical company profits? I put a lot of what I learned on this issue into this article: “Vaccines And Autism: The Secret That You Are Not Supposed To Know“.
“9% of voters think the government adds fluoride to our water supply for sinister reasons (not just dental health)”
Whatever the intention, the truth is that there is a tremendous amount of evidence that drinking fluoride is very harmful to humans. A number of studies have shown that it actually causes brain damage, and it has been shown to accelerate the growth of cancer. A blog post by Mary Bloomer summarized some of the other reasons why we should avoid Fluoride…
“51% of voters say a larger conspiracy was at work in the JFK assassination, just 25% say Oswald acted alone”
Does anyone actually still believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone? Even though a majority of the American people now believe that there was a larger conspiracy at work in that assassination, the government and the media are still sticking to their story.
“5% believe exhaust seen in the sky behind airplanes is actually chemicals sprayed by the government for sinister reasons”
Do you see how they worded that question? The exhaust trails that normal aircraft leave behind are called “contrails“, and they usually disappear within moments. “Chemtrails” are something else entirely. Once they are sprayed in the air, they can often remain up there for hours. But apparently we aren’t supposed to notice the huge white lines that crisscross the sky right above our heads. The only real debate about chemtrails should be about what their purpose is. Are they being used for weather modification projects or is something more sinister happening?
“15% of voters think the medical industry and the pharmaceutical industry ‘invent’ new diseases to make money”
The pharmaceutical industry may not be inventing diseases just to make money, but they sure do love to invent new reasons to get people hooked on their legal drugs. The sad truth is that the American people are the most doped up people on the face of the planet. The following are some facts about pharmaceutical drugs from my recent article entitled “50 Signs That The U.S. Health Care System Is A Gigantic Money Making Scam“…
-During 2013, Americans will spend more than 280 billion dollars on prescription drugs.
-Prescription drugs cost about 50% more in the United States than they do in other countries.
-In the United States today, prescription painkillers kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined.
-Nearly half of all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular basis according to the CDC. Not only that, the CDC also says that approximately one-third of all Americans use two or more pharmaceutical drugs on a regular basis, and more than ten percent of all Americans use five or more pharmaceutical drugs on a regular basis.
-The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.
-In 2010, the average teen in the U.S. was taking 1.2 central nervous system drugs. Those are the kinds of drugs which treat conditions such as ADHD and depression.
-Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants as children in Europe are.
-There were more than two dozen pharmaceutical companies that made over a billion dollars in profits during 2008.
-According to the CDC, approximately three quarters of a million people a year are rushed to emergency rooms in the United States because of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs.
As you can see, there are usually at least two sides to every story.
So the next time someone tries to dismiss a particular viewpoint by dismissing it as a “conspiracy theory” just because it does not conform to the official propaganda being put out by the U.S. government and the mainstream media, perhaps you should say something.
We are living at a time when it is more important than ever to think for ourselves. Our world is becoming increasingly unstable, and there are lots of people out there that want to tell us what we should believe.
Do not allow the government and the media to do your thinking for you. That is the lazy way out, and it will only end in a whole lot of pain.
Question everything.
Do your own research and come to your own conclusions.
The truth is out there, but you are going to have to unplug from “the matrix” in order to find it.