Repossession hell: 5 extremely wrongful foreclosures

Editor’s Note: The primary reason for foreclosing on the wrong house is that the wrong party (not the creditor) is initiating the foreclosure and therefore lacks sufficient information about the loan, the property or the debtor.

These events are corroboration of stories previously published showing that loans were placed in “pools” even though they never closed and therefore didn’t exist. The mere application of a loan was sufficient for “assignment” of the “loan.” And let’s not forget that the “assignment” typically violates even the terms of the PSA either as to time cut-off or the requirement of recording or recordable form.

Repossession hell: 5 extremely wrongful foreclosures

The Pittsburgh woman whose bank ‘accidentally’ took everything she owned—even her macaw parrot—plus 4 more homeowner horror stories

Home foreclosures: The opposite of the American dream. Photo: Corbis

A Pittsburgh woman is suing the Bank of America after it wrongfully foreclosed on her home, ransacking her possessions, cutting power lines, padlocking her doors, and confiscating her pet parrot. Angela Iannelli, 46—who was away when repo men made off with her beloved blue macaw, Luke—says she’s now “afraid to set foot in her house.” She’s filed a civil suit claiming that bank representatives refused to reveal Luke’s “whereabouts” and told her they “were tired of hearing from her.” (Watch an ABC report about Angela Iannelli’s foreclosed home.) Here, four more victims of erroneous repossession:

They took her wedding dress
Last December, Nilly Mauck, 31, came home to find her décor brutally simplified. Contractors assigned to repossess condo No. 1156 had mistakenly emptied No. 1157, her Las Vegas apartment of two years. Though she’s demanded “$100,000 to $200,000” in compensation for them taking, well, everything (including her wedding dress), the Realtor has offered only $5,000. Mauck says she’s seeking legal advice and learning “to live with the clothes on her back.”

Wrong house, but thanks for rotten halibut
Dr. Alan Schroit got a “putrid” surprise when he arrived at his Galveston, Texas, vacation home last October. Bank of America (“with which he has neither a relationship nor a mortgage”) had repossessed his home and turned off the utilities, leaving 75 pounds of frozen salmon and halibut (spoils of an Alaskan fishing trip) to rot in the fridge. Schroit, who’d been planning to grill the fish for 30 guests the next night, is suing the bank.

Luckily, he was not in a mood to swim
Kissimmee, Fla., resident Denroy Bell was living in London, England, when a confused Kissimmee bank attempted to foreclose on his Florida home in 2008. The sloppy institution, Citi-Residential, changed the locks and drained the swimming pool. “It was like an army came up and took over the house,” said Esther Goshop, Bell’s neighbor. Unusually gracious, Bell has asked only that Citi-Residential refill his pool and restore his locks.

Promises, promises …
A jury punished Countrywide Home Loans in January 2009 for failing to notice that it was repossessing and selling the wrong Las Vegas condo back in 2003. Sgt. Gerald Thitchener and his wife, Katrina, absent at the time, were awarded $3.4 million in damages. “[Countrywide] never even said they were sorry,” noted one juror, “[though they did say] it would never happen again.”

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