Bloomberg News and ProPublica have the story: Bank of America gave bonuses and gift cards to employees who met quotas for putting homeowners into foreclosure, incentivizing employees to figure out inventive and illegal ways to closed accounts. It’s a story that deserves to be heard widely and will hopefully lead to criminal prosecutions so this kind of behavior can be stopped. It just goes to show how little the big banks actually care about their customers, and it renews one of the most pressing questions in our minds: Why does anyone still bank with Bank of America?
Here are few quotes from the employees who are speaking out:
“I witnessed employees and managers change and falsify information in the systems of record, and remove documents from homeowners’ files to make the account appear ineligible for a loan modification.”
“On many occasions, homeowners who did not receive the permanent modification that they were entitled to ultimately lost their homes.”
“We were told to lie to customers and claim that Bank of America had not received documents it had requested.”
“We were told that admitting that the Bank received documents ‘would open a can of worms.’”
It’s a little insane isn’t it? Incentivizing employees to hurt customers? However, it does go a little ways in explaining why so many foreclosure papers were “lost” in recent years.
Read the full story at Bloomberg and ProPublica, and also see our post about why Bank of America is the worst.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED TO US! Me and my husband went through 2 years of reapplying or re giving them all our info that they kept changing or saying they didn’t get, at least 7 times over 2 years. Sometimes having to pay more than our mortgage to “prove” we could pay on time for 3 mos (i wasn’t even LATE for ONE SINGLE payment in 12 years, hows that not proof).. NOW we are having to sell our home and although I should only owe $80,000 (that IS what i owe) they are claiming I owe them like $15,000 more than that. SO a house I bought in 1999 for $99,000 and paid on without even 1 late payment until 2 years ago when I had to miss 1 payment… I even called them ahead of time when I realized we weren’t going to make it and they told me they couldn’t help me until i was over 30 days. So out of 1 missed payment in 14 years I only paid off $1000. My lawyer said that even though we paid our equity down to $80,000, it doesnt matter because after I give them what they say I own them, I will be paying almost more than I bought the house for. Only because its going for slightly higher than we bought it for, are we getting anything at all. Not enough to even buy a crappy mobile home. They totally set us up. They totally lied to us every single phone call. I always had it on speaker and I always asked about the details. They lied about everything. Our numbers were perfect, there was NO REASON to deny me. They just did, on christmas eve, Along with a second letter that said I owned them at that point, they said almost 10,000 and if i didn’t pay it all by January 18 I think (less than a month away, xmas eve), they were foreclosing. So i claimed bankruptcy to try to save my house, but now I have an extra $300 to the $1000 mortgage I have because I have to pay WELLS FARGO back what I do NOT owe them! I followed every procedure, every instruction and financially was at the perfect place for HAMP approval, when they decided to just disregard $10,000 of my income and refuse me. I’ve been trying to get help since this started. I was referred to a lawyer who was supposed to help me, but instead charged me a bunch for my bankruptcy (i was eligible for free legal aid at the time but it wasn’t going to be fast enough to save my home and he was on a list of lawyers the state had, who wanted to ‘help’ people like me. he lied too)During all this I had to have major surgery to remove a coke can sized tumor from my abdomen (part of my money issue) and was diagnosed with a CNS disease. I starve at least the last week of every month and share every meal with my dog so he doesn’t starve. None of this is good for my diabetes and never should have happened. If anyone can help us, please please please contact us within the next 2 months. After that, we don’t know where we’ll be. We know our home cannot be saved, but we are willing to go to court if anyone ever gets anything started. If you want ME to start it, just send me a lawyer who wants the case. I’ll sue for everyone. SOMEONE has to DO SOMETHING about this! I did everything right, most of us did NOTHING wrong, how does this happen? Can we fix this PLEASE? My FB is here, shoot me a message if you can help. Here’s hoping that some of us someday get some justice for the horrible things that have been done to us. Taking our homes, destroying our families, starving the American people because you need a few more dollars in that overseas account you don’t pay taxes on. Awesome.. come on, someone? Anyone? Please?