When she finally got into the house, it was empty. All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter clothes and family photos. Also missing was a wooden box, its top inscribed with the words “Together Forever,” that contained the ashes of her late husband, Robert.
The culprit, Ms. Ash soon learned, was not a burglar but her bank. According to a federal lawsuit filed in October by Ms. Ash, Bank of America had wrongfully foreclosed on her house and thrown out her belongings, without alerting Ms. Ash beforehand.
In related news, it looks like the New Jersey Supreme Court might suspend foreclosures in that state.
Carnacki
Until bankers go to jail, they have no reason to change their behavior.
This country locks up people for much minor offenses. When did bankers get immunity?
Culture of Truth
Alan Jaffa, chief executive of Safeguard Properties, which inspects and maintains foreclosed properties for mortgage servicers, acknowledged that a handful of mistakes had been made. In most instances, he said, his company provided a valuable service that protected properties and neighborhoods.
“There is a stigma that we go in, kick the door in and throw grandma out head first and board up the windows,” Mr. Jaffa said. “We are doing a lot of good out there.”
They’re heroes, really.
Dork
As Atrios has said a million times, if me or you did this, it’d be grand larceny, destruction of property, B & E, etc. Prolly 20 years in the can.
Yet a bank can do it with impunity. Odd times, indeed.
Face
Wait….Robert Ash was ashed? Mrs. Ash seeks Robert Ash’s ashes? There’s a funnier joke in there somewherez.
Dennis SGMM
@Culture of Truth:
Alan Jaffa, chief executive of Safeguard Properties, which inspects and maintains foreclosed properties for mortgage servicers, acknowledged that a handful of mistakes had been made.
“…mistakes had been made.” It’s a good thing that neither Bank of America nor Safeguard Properties made the mistakes or someone would be in real trouble. As it is, the mistakes were just weeds that cropped up in the carefully tended goodness of BofA and Safeguard Properties.
Anyone who doesn’t realize that there are at least two separate countries here isn’t paying attention.
Mr. Prosser
Notice the banks blame their “contractors.” This is the same lame crap the gov’t says when some atrocity is committed or incredible ineptitude is shown. By the way, there is a foreclosed house in our neighborhood which has been empty for three years, we have been told that three offers have been put on it in that time for the bank’s asking price but the bank takes no action. Is there some advantage to the bank to keep a property on the books for write-offs or something like that? Also, the utilities are shut off so the adjoining neighbors take turns watering the front lawn to at least make it look somewhat presentable, are we stupid?
former financial anal-ist
Before I was ‘let go’ by Bank of America two years ago (to make room for those nice Merrill Lynch people) one of the projects I was working on was an analysis of mortgage modifications.
Who among us can claim such pride in their employment history?
cleek
i hope Mrs Ash has a good, vengeful, stick-it-to-em lawyer. i’d be all like “BoA, you’re gonna buy me a new house, and fill it full of new everything. and then you’re going to give me $100,000,000 on top of that. and you’re going to pay my lawyer bills, and any other bills that come my way for the next ten years.”
Phil Perspective
I doubt they do these things in the South? And if they do they are very careful about it. For obvious reasons.
jibeaux
@cleek:
“And oh yeah, I need someone’s ashes in a box. Preferably yours.”
aimai
@Phil Perspective:
What does that even mean? They are doing this stuff all over the South.
aimai
Culture of Truth
@Phil Perspective:
They just wait until everyone is at the Secession Ball
NobodySpecial
@Dennis SGMM: “Mistakes were made”. So fucking familiar.
fubar
My question, why are not more people enraged? Seems the prevailing feeling is that this is the price of doing business. So a few little people get stepped on, so what?
When did this become the norm?
Comrade Javamanphil
Buck up Mrs. Ash, it could be worse. Some poor banksters are Zeroes this year and thus have long faces. Won’t you think of their pain and suffering at this difficult time of low bonuses?
Southern Beale
In related news, it appears Bank of America is preparing for the expected WikiLeaks release of embarrassing documents by buying up “abusive” domain names …
catclub
I think they couldn’t write ( but I can!) “…and when she was there, the cupboard was bare.”
Although Ash’s ashes thrown in the ashbin by some asshole.
Is pretty tempting.
singfoom
Has every single Corporate Officer forgotten the phrase “due diligence”?
Come on. If you hire a contractor that does bad things, you’re ultimately responsible. If you hired them, you take responsibility for their actions while acting on behalf of you. That’s how it fucking works. So if they are criminals, it behooves you to either drop the contract or ensure that the contractor removes the individuals responsible for the behavior and puts verification systems in place to prevent these kinds of issues.
I hope that those who this happens to sue the contractors for civil damages, sue the banks for failing to properly manage their contractors, and file criminal complaints against the individuals who stole their stuff if they can discover their identities.
True, money won’t replace family heirlooms and won’t erase the memories of the space being violated, but at the very least those things can be replaced in a material way.
We can be sure of one thing though. No bankster will ever go to jail for this. They have a different legal code for banksters.
djheru
Obviously, this is the fault of Fannie Mae.
Also, too, Barney Frank is ghey.
Dennis SGMM
@NobodySpecial:
I loathe that passive voice, POS phrase. Someone once referred to it as “the past exonerative tense.”
Zifnab
@Phil Perspective:
Ha. They do these things in the South. Usually they show up with a constable, throw you in the back of a squad car, kill your dog, AND THEN ransack your house.
2nd Amendment Remedies are an illusion. Also, a great excuse for cops to shoot first and ask questions later.
John W.
What amazes me is that conservatives will throw a hissy fit over Kelo v. New London but shrug their shoulders at shit like this.
Modern conservative theory boils down to this: government shouldn’t do anything, especially infringe on any corporate activities whatsoever.
It’s nonsensical.
NonyNony
@aimai:
I suspect he means that they have guns in the South and aren’t afraid to use ’em.
Of course something like this could never happen in Texas …
That one was in TFA, so yeah. Guns ain’t stopping the banksters from taking property that they have no stake in at all.
The stories in the article are all about “second homes” as well – vacation homes, rental homes, etc. Something smells about that – like the banks are snatching them because they know they sit empty and they believe that possession is 9/10ths of the law.
Alwhite
In honor of the season:
Welcome to Potterville.
“Teacher says every time a house is foreclosed a banker gets his bonus.”
John S.
@Phil Perspective:
If you read the article, it discusses cases in Texas and Florida. So clearly, it does happen in the South.
dr. bloor
@Southern Beale:
Because that’s so much more cost effective than actually, you know, remedying their criminal and abusively antisocial practices.
Gin & Tonic
This statement is factually incorrect. The culprit was a burglar employed by her bank. Note how the NYT is changing the narrative here.
singfoom
@Gin & Tonic: I disagree. The contractor was acting as an agent of the bank, therefore it’s reasonable to stay that the bank was responsible.
Southern Beale
@dr. bloor:
Eggggg-zackly.
jibeaux
@Gin & Tonic:
um, how does it change the narrative? For most of us, it doesn’t especially matter whether the bank illegally tossed your husband’s ashes or the bank’s contractor acting on the bank’s illegal authority tossed your husband’s ashes, with the exception of there being one more guilty party in the second scenario.
Michael
@Mr. Prosser:
Light the fucker up. Either that, or become a code enforcement nanny about that property – most communities have a treble assessment provision for abandoned properties written into their land use ordinances.
Villago Delenda Est
The bottom line is, the rule of law in this country is but a sad joke. Corporations and the top 1% can flout it at will, but we proles must endure full body scans when we board airplanes.
NonyNony
@jibeaux:
It changes it from a “burglary” to a “mistake by the bank”.
I think that G&T point is that it’s actually a “burglary by the bank” – a burglary was committed. It was just committed by an agent of Bank of America, not by a guy looking to fence her property for money.
Citizen_X
@singfoom: @jibeaux: I think Gin & Tonic was pointing out that the Times was obscuring the criminality of the bank.
Gin & Tonic
@NonyNony: This. NYT says “it was not a burglar”. It *was* a burglar.
Citizen_X
OK, NonyNony got there first.
Where mah edit buttons at?
jwb
@John W.: Just wait till the libertarians weigh in and once again turn liberty on its head: “Banks have a right to protect their investment. Anyone who doesn’t want banks breaking in and ransacking their home can simply choose not to get a mortgage.”
beltane
@Zifnab: The illusion of 2nd Amendment remedies is the source of many of this country’s woes. A rugged individual with firearms is easy for the authorities to subdue, and 300 million such individuals are just as easy to subdue as one individual.
A mob gathered outside a banker’s office armed with bricks and stones is far more of a threat to the PTB than someone with an arsenal of semi-automatic weapons. Strength is derived from numbers, not firepower. Our weapons keep us passive and compliant.
Ross Hershberger
Maybe this is where the real populist outrage starts. A homeowner weeping on the sidewalk in front of their repossessed home makes for great TV. And images are all that moves people these days. A few stories like this get onto the evening news and suddenly a lot of people become aware that American homeowners are getting bent over by the banks. Then Elizabeth Warren gets on TV, and…
Villago Delenda Est
@Ross Hershberger:
Won’t be seen on TV.
The corporatist overlords who rule the airwaves will not allow it. They’ll wave it off as “mistakes were made”.
Until banksters are incarcerated for these actions, there will be no change. And they will never be incarcerated.
These stupid short term focused shitheads are going to get themselves rides on tumbrels, eventually.
Scott
@jwb:
Just wait till the libertarians weigh in and once again turn liberty on its head: “Banks have a right to protect their investment. Anyone who doesn’t want banks breaking in and ransacking their home can simply choose not to get a mortgage.”
But since the banks “foreclose” on homes they don’t even own, maybe it needs to be “Anyone who doesn’t want banks breaking in and ransacking their home can simply choose not to have anywhere to live.”
Chris
@NonyNony:
Exactly. It implies a distinction where, in many people’s opinion, none exists.
Not unlike the Gilded Age when you had your Mafia families, and then you had your robber-baron trusts… different side of the train tracks, but same shit.
beltane
@jwb: Some of the victims of these property crimes did not even have mortgages. The libertarians may very well feel that the bankers, by virtue of some sort of superior Galtian genetic trait, have an inherent right to all property owned by lesser people, but that is another story.
Snarki, child of Loki
@Dork:
You get a paper robo-signed by BofA, and it’s all good!
How long until this plan percolates down to rank-and-file criminals?
Chris
@beltane:
That’s a depressing way to look at it, but you’re right. They let us keep our shiny toys and figure we’re shallow enough that it’ll distract us. In a lot of cases, they’re right.
celticdragonchick
@Carnacki:
Unlikely in my neighborhood…but any “wrong address” idiots who might come into my place to change the locks and grab the jewelry will be shot repeatdly.
chris mohr
All these accounts of banks attempting to foreclose on houses with mortgages that have been in fact completely paid off, or one the wrong houses owned by completely different people than the properties/people the mortgage concerned, really make me nervous.
For fifteen years, my wife and I have owned a house at a beach in North Carolina, totally free and clear. I’m not sure how I would react if I went down there one day and found a bank’s agent in the process of trying to change the locks and remove the furniture and contents for storage…if the trespasser didn’t leave immediately, I’d probably feel threatened and could potentially get violent with them to stop and remove them, because they’re invading a place I regard as every bit as much my true home as my regular residence three hours away in Raleigh. They in turn might react forcefully against me.
Then what? Who would the sheriff be inclined to protect, me with a copy of my deed I could come up with at the house, that is if I got there soon enough before the agent had trundled it away, or the bank’s agent? Who would they treat as the criminal invader acting without proper legal process? I really don’t know, and it scares me to think about.
Svensker
@Mr. Prosser:
I believe, yes. They don’t have to take the write-down price of the asset, but can keep the “full-value” asset price on their books. Even though that value is complete fantasy, it protects the bank from having to acknowledge a loss. Someone who knows more about banks and their need to keep book value high can explain better than I.
jibeaux
@Citizen_X:
Ah. Nah, I don’t think they were particularly obscuring it, personally, since I wouldn’t call someone acting with color of authority a burglar. But I understand the point better now.
celticdragonchick
@Zifnab:
Bank agents are not showing up with cops. There are far too many houses for that sort of thing.
As suggestd by another respondant however, a group of people at the home in question is more effective, although the example of that in Florida a couple of months ago drew a massive police over-response and it looked really fucking tense for awhile.
Groups of the “sheeple” gettinng organized is a real threat to power, and will be stamped out if possible.
El Cid
I hope that the Supreme Court can defend these well-intentioned businesses from the sorts of greedy, short-sighted lawsuits that limousine liberals will push these slightly inconvenienced individuals into.
celticdragonchick
@El Cid:
Welcome to the Plutonomy, and you and I had better learn our places, and bow & scrape to our betters.
Gin & Tonic
@jibeaux:
What “color of authority” does a bank or its agent have when entering and changing the locks on a property on which it does not hold a mortgage? At least one example like that was listed in the NYT piece. That’s B&E, pure and simple.
Benjamin Cisco
@Culture of Truth:
Clearly, Apophis will have him killed for admitting this.
singfoom
@Gin & Tonic: I agree, but I think you would have to find the specific employee of the contractor and file a criminal complaint against them while pursuing civil charges against the contractor and bank that hired them.
I don’t understand why lawyers haven’t been able to convince a judge to order the banks to stop these practices until controls can be put into place to verify ownership to prevent these situations.
Oh well, like people up thread said, laws are for us proles.
Gin & Tonic
@singfoom: Why only civil charges? That’s what I mean about the narrative having been changed. If a bank hires somebody to go into a house it does not own and remove all the stuff, that’s breaking and entering and burglary. If I hire somebody to shoot you, I’m as criminally liable as the shooter. If a bank hires someone to take something that is not theirs, why do you want them to be only civilly liable?
Mnemosyne
@Mr. Prosser:
Of course they do, because it means that no one can be held responsible. The bank argues that they had no idea that their contractors were ransacking houses that didn’t belong to the bank (and they have enough money to pay high-powered lawyers to make the argument) and the contractors say they were just doing what the bank wanted, and the courts throw up their hands and say, “Well, I guess it wasn’t anyone’s fault, just honest mistakes.”
Sure, it’s an honest mistake that happens tens, if not hundreds, of times over and over again, but did you really expect to win your piddly lawsuit against BofA’s resources?
Mumphrey
I for one blame the homeowners. They thoughtlessly and cruelly pay their mortgages, in some cases paying them off altogether, which takes away the banks’ right to lawfully foreclose, and thus forces the poor, beleaguered banks to use underhanded and in some cases, criminal, means to take these houses and resell them to run up their profits and earn their obscene bonuses. It isn’t like the banks want to behave unethically or illegally. I mean, who does? But when homeowners viciously refuse to fall behind, when they so vilely and manipulatively fulfill all their obligations, then where does that leave the banks?
Let’s be fair here. When people won’t give the banks the excuses they need to dump people out on the street, rifle though their belongings and break and steal things indiscriminately, banks are going to have to defend themselves, and dump people out on the street, rifle though their belongings and break and steal things indiscriminately without any excuse, and it’s indefensible to put banks in that position. After all, what choice do they have? Those people aren’t going to dump themselves out on the street; those belongings aren’t going to rifle through themselves; those things aren’t going to break and steal themselves.
Now, I want to say for the record that what happened to Mrs. Ash is regrettable–slightly. But what she did to the banks, in trying to work things out with the bank, and in speaking up, is truly beyond the pale. She should be ashamed of herself. Damn her for trying to pay her mortgage on time. Double damn her for not rolling over and apologizing–deeply, humbly, abjectly, sincerely and privately–for putting the bank in that position. Who the hell does she think she is?
singfoom
@Gin & Tonic: The reason I suggest civil charges against the bank is because I think it would be very difficult to prove the motive on that crime for the bank.
While I share your outrage, in order to prove the criminal complaint, you’d have to prove the bank planned to commit the crime. If the evidence exists, I’d say go for it, but I would imagine that the bank is merely negligent and the contractors get the wrong house, steal all the shit and keep it for themselves and report to the bank.
I don’t think the banks intend for this to happen, because it looks so goddamn bad and it just generates lawsuits. I may be wrong, they may want this to happen, but I would imagine those memos have been shredded and e-mails stating such were never sent.
Comrade Dread
I wonder how long Americans are going to tolerate this kind of behavior.
Maude
@singfoom:
A crime was commited. The only question is who gets charged.
Premeditation isn’t a factor all of the time.
Negligence is a factor that juries aren’t going to take kindly to when a husband’s ashes have been trashed.
Both parties have done the deed.
jcricket
@Comrade Dread:
Tolerate? We’re encouraging it and sanctioning it. At least all of the Americans that vote for the GOP and the Blue Dogs.
It’s a race to the bottom right now and Americans are not just on the sidelines cheering, but actively pushing each other down to see who can get there the fastest.
Lupin
Speaking as a banker, I find the whole thing extremely amusing; it relieves the dreary boredom of coming up with new schemes to suck up your retirement money.
I also like to throw a handful of $100 notes from my penthouse and watch the poor fight for them below; I never get tired of it really. I did pay a $50 fine for doing it once, but it was worth it and besides I deducted it from my $2000 tax bill. (Memo to self: send donation to my GOP Congressman to cut taxes some more.)
I just bought a tropical island with my bonus and hiring young comely
prostitutesinterns to, er, do spread sheets for me. Nudge nudge wink wink. If you’re interested, send a CV with photo; don’t forget to fill in the organ donor card attached.jibeaux
@Gin & Tonic:
But in the example they gave in which the word “burglar” was used, the woman with the vacation house in California, she did have a mortgage that she was behind on, held by BofA, but the bank had not initiated any foreclosure proceedings yet. They had no legitimate authority to do what they did, but they had a color of authority in the sense that they did hold a mortgage that she was behind on. I think the NYT actually did a pretty good job with that contrast, because I think it sets a scene of “what it looked like when she got home is what you would expect if a man in a black mask and crowbar holding a pillowcase came around in the dead of night, except that it was done by her bank.”
PIGL
@Comrade Dread: Until the USA no longer exists as a political entity. Or hell freezes over.
BeccaM
My wife and I were planning to buy a house this coming spring. We were out of the country for a few years, then came back, rented a year and a half just to get re-settled…but this BS is nuts.
Still declining real estate values. Bankster fraud. Blatantly illegal foreclosures. Ridiculous new mortgage terms and requirements.
We had a series of long talks last month and decided ‘fuck it — we’re gonna keep renting for now.’
Ross Hershberger
I still think this kind of story has legs, at least on the local level. Few things are more sacred to Americans than the family home. And optics count in selling a story. In the case of a house, they can pull the TV truck up to the curb and get their story with pictures in 10 minutes. It’s the kind of thing that local affiliates do all the time. Easy to understand, lots of video and weeping people locked out of their house.
Nobody really wants stories about the complexities of repackaging mortgages, mortgage backed securities, and ZZZzzzzzzz…..
But people suddenly homeless because of a big, bad bank is a no brainer for the local news.
jwb
@beltane: If I read the story correctly, all of the properties had had mortgages at one time; some of the owners had simply paid off the mortgage. So they could have obviously avoided the problem with the bank by not having had that mortgage in the first place.
/glibertarian
jcricket
@jwb: If people don’t want to get fucked by the banks they should invent a time machine, go back in time, and just pick another bank that won’t fuck them.
Any other kind of solution just interferes with the natural order of things.
Jay in Oregon
@jcricket:
FTFY.
Less Popular Tim
@chris mohr: Sounds like you need a spring gun
Less Popular Tim
@Maude:
It’s not a question of premeditation, it’s a question of intent. Burglary is a specific intent crime. If you didn’t intend to remove things that you knew you didn’t have the right to remove from a dwelling, you didn’t commit burglary. (That intent could be instantaneous and not premediated.) If I accidentally walk into my neigbors identical house believing it was my house, and take his identical golf clubs thinking they are my clubs, I didn’t commit burglary.
What I did may have been incredibly fucking stupid. A jury may not even believe that I didn’t know the clubs weren’t mine, and they may impute intent to my actions. But if it is established that I didn’t intend to steal, it isn’t burglary, period.
I don’t think the banks intended that their agent go into some house they have no security interest in and take the stuff there for the agent’s personal use or disposal. The banks and their agents may be incredibly fucking stupid. It may be criminallly negligent, but that would be a statute other than the burglary statute. Most criminal negligence statutes deal with injury or death, since the law pretends that money can fully compensate for anything else.
If a bank didn’t hire someone to commit burglary, the bank isn’t criminally liable for burglary.
Now, I think the banks should be sued into oblivion. But you’d have to find an applicable criminal negligence statute to convince anyone that a crime was committed.