Foreclosure Defense: Wells Fargo — unsettling disclosures

WELLS FARGO CREATES FRAUDULENT MORTGAGE, FRAUDULENT FORECLOSURE, AND FRAUDULENT NEGATIVE CREDIT INFORMATION:

THE ULTIMATE IN CORPORATE ARROGANCE

In the course of defending numerous foreclosure actions around the United States, we have come across some fairly horrendous fact patterns, but to date, that described here (a true story, by the way) takes the cake hands down. The actions of Wells Fargo and its associated mortgage broker Premier Mortgage Funding can only be described as the ultimate in corporate greed and arrogance. As the matter is now the subject of a formal claim, we cannot reveal the name of the innocent victim, but can and do disclose the identities of the guilty perpetrators of this most insidious scam.

The victim is a single young woman who was looking to purchase a home. After viewing several properties, she decided on a particular home and initiated the loan application process to see if she qualified for an amount of financing needed to purchase the property. Loan application documents naming several potential lenders, including Wells Fargo, were filled out through Premier Mortgage Funding. However, in the days that followed and within the legally prescribed period to decline the transaction, she decided for her own reasons not to pursue the purchase. She notified the broke, and signed a Release of Purchase Agreement. These events occurred in late September, 2007.

Six months later on March 21, 2008, she received a call from a representative of Wells Fargo advising her that she was being placed in foreclosure, as Wells Fargo claimed that she was in default on a mortgage which Wells Fargo had placed in her name on the property which she had decided not to purchase in the fall of 2007. She advised Wells Fargo that she had properly declined to go through with the purchase, had signed a release of the purchase agreement. However, Wells Fargo stated that they were in possession of a mortgage in her name for the subject property, were proceeding with the foreclosure, and that Wells Fargo had placed the loan and foreclosure on her credit report.

Although she persisted in her attempts to rectify the matter informally, Wells Fargo did nothing but stall, make excuses, and eventually do nothing. Wells Fargo first promised to rectify the matter “within 3-4 days”, then “within 6-8 weeks”, with eventually nothing being done at all other than Wells Fargo admitting to her that they had “no documents on this file”, but that Wells Fargo still would not remove the loan and the negative information on her credit report.

What apparently took place was that Wells Fargo had presold the mortgage at or about the time that the victim filled out the loan application, and obviously sold the “mortgage” without any closing taking place as the victim had canceled the transaction and no closing ever occurred. Notwithstanding that there was no valid purchase contract, no executed loan documents, and no closing, Wells Fargo created a fraudulent mortgage which it apparently sold to a third party; created a fraudulent foreclosure on property which the victim did not even own and which was not in her name; and created and published fraudulent negative information on the victim’s credit report. In the ultimate act of corporate arrogance, Wells Fargo continues to refuse to cause the negative information to be removed from the victim’s credit history and insists that the victim is in default on the (phantom) mortgage.

Given that Wells Fargo is one of the largest financial institutions in the United States and given that Wells Fargo perpetrated this fraud upon an innocent victim obviously as part of a scheme involving resale or assignment of phony mortgages to third parties, it is more than likely that the victim here was not the only victim of the Wells Fargo Fraud Machine. The only question at this point is how widespread was this fraudulent operation, and what will it take to cause Wells Fargo and its co-conspirators to cease their illegal and unlawful conduct.

Stay tuned. We are sure there is more to come.

Jeff Barnes, Esq.

Tags: falso documentation, fraud, lender, Premier Mortgage, Wells Fargo
Posted in Eviction |