Talk about turning the tables on a bank!
Warren and Maureen Nyerges paid cash when they bought a home from Bank of America in the Golden Gate Estates section of Collier, County, Fla., according to CBS affiliate WINK-TV in Ft. Myers.
But that didn't stop Bank of America from trying to foreclose on them.
They took their case to court and, a year-and-a-half later, the foreclosure action was dropped.
A Collier County judge said Bank of America had to pay the couple's $2,534 legal fees, since it had made the mistake.
After more than five months, the bank still hadn't paid up. So, the homeowners' lawyer, Todd Allen, began proceedings to did just what a bank would have to get its money: legally seize bank assets.
On Friday, sheriff's deputies and moving vans showed up at the bank.
"I instructed the deputy to go in and take desks, computers, copiers, and filing cabinets, including cash in the drawers," Allen says.
Inside, says WINK, "The homeowners' attorney was locked out of the bank manager's office by deputies while the bank manger tried to figure out what to do."
Allen told WINK, "Having two Sheriff's deputies sitting across your desk, and a lawyer standing behind them, demanding whatever assets are in the bank can be intimidating. But, so is having your home foreclosed on when it wasn't right."
Bank of America finally cut a check. No furniture was actually taken, and the bank, says WINK, apologized for the delay, claiming the original request went to an outside attorney who is no longer in business.
Allen called what happened to the couple a symptom of a larger problem he sees often in the courts, in which banks don't perform their due diligence on foreclosure cases. "As a foreclosure defense attorney, this is sweet justice," he remarked to WINK.
sjmp75020 on July 18th, 2017 at 09:35 UTC »
I was once in a courtroom during a telephonic hearing on a BOA foreclosure on a house with a $300k mortgage. The homeowners were there and the husband was fighting cancer, hence the reason they weren't paying the mortgage.
BOA had failed to appear for a prior hearing and the judge had ordered them to show cause why the case shouldn't be dismissed. BOA's attorneys then asked for the hearing to be held by phone, gave the court the number to call, etc. The judge called the number they gave for the legal department and it wasn't open yet. He finally got someone on the phone, explained who he was, and that they were supposed to be having a hearing. The woman on the phone was completely rude, ended up yelling at the judge, telling him he had to call back when the legal department opened, and finally hung up on him. The judge was so pissed he dismissed the case with prejudice. The homeowners basically wound up with a free house.
Months later I asked their attorney if BOA had done anything to set the judge's order aside and he said they tried and then failed to appear for that hearing. The judge then ordered BOA to pay the homeowners $5K in attorney fees.
pessamistic on July 18th, 2017 at 07:37 UTC »
Bank of America recently took more than $700 from my account because they said that I only deposited $30 in cash into an ATM back in February rather than the the $740 I deposited in there (they've also told me that somebody mistakenly deposited the money into my account and filed a claim, and the claim just went through). It's been a nightmare dealing with it.
Edit: Wow! Rip inbox! I posted this before I went to bed last night. Didn't expect it to blow up. Since I don't have time to reply to you all, here's the story:
I work in a high end restaurant. I regularly come home with large amounts of cash. The BofA near my house is in a supermarket and typically only has one or teller working. Early 2017 was a busy time of year for us so I was regularly coming home with between $500-$800 (I work lunches which are somewhat less profitable than if I worked dinner shifts). I typically use the ATM to save time, and have never had a problem until the other day. I typically only save receipts for a week, until I'm confident the funds are in my account.
On Thursday, I went to the bank and withdrew $60. I figured I had about $800+, but when I looked at my receipt it said there was only $115. I checked the BofA app and found a $710 hold for a "debit adjustment" that was still processing. Since it was still processing, I was told by the teller and someone on the customer service line that I wouldn't be able to find out what was wrong until it went through the next morning. When I woke up on Friday there was a note on the transaction saying there was an ATM shortage of $740 on Feb. 27th and that they had deducted $710 from my account.
I called customer service trying to figure out what happened, was shuffled around until I got to the ATM/debit dept. The lady told me that I had only deposited $30 and the machine had read it as $740, so they took $710 to fix the imbalance (although the $740 was consistent with all my other deposits from Jan-March and beyond). I was then transferred to a woman in Claims who told me if I wanted to make a claim, they would need to take ANOTHER $740 to initiate the claim (I didn't mishear this, this is what I was told by the woman on the phone). I said there'd be no way in hell I'd allow them to take another $740 and that I'd be going to speak with someone in person.
I went to the branch near my house and spoke with the branch manager. He said he'd never seen anything like it and put me on the phone with another lady who said that it wasn't an ATM error, but instead a number got flubbed during a deposit someone else made and the money was deposited into my account. I said that was peculiar since it was at an ATM and asked if there was any way I could file a claim and reiterated what I had been told previously. She said the info I was given was incorrect, that they wouldn't need more money to initiate the claim, but now they wouldn't allow me to make one. I told them I'd be taking my business elsewhere then.
Work let me off early that afternoon because I was freaking out about what had happened. I then went to the branch near my restaurant and spoke with the relations manager telling him that there were too many inconsistencies in these stories for me to ignore them and that I wasn't satisfied with the answers I received. Even he said it was odd that this was occurring nearly 5 months down the road. Things like this do happen occasionally, he said, but they're usually resolved in two weeks of the occurrence, and that's a long time. He put me into contact with someone from claims and I was finally able to make a claim, although I received no ref. number or anything like that.
Yesterday, I received a document from the bank that was basically a copy of the note left on my transaction history about the ATM shortage. I was telling my friend the story around 7pm and discovered that the money had found its way back into my account (I'd been checking it all day and this was the first time I'd seen it. The claims department said that I would receive a credit while the claim is investigated, but that would be after 10 days, yesterday was 1/1.5. I'm headed back to the bank today to get more answers from them.
Please excuse the brevity and any spelling errors. I'm writing this from my phone.
Xendarq on July 18th, 2017 at 03:26 UTC »
They tried to foreclose a house they didn't write a loan for? How does that even happen?