Bank Of America Forecloses On House Couple Paid Cash For

Stay classy BOA! Talk about making a couple's lives a living HELL.

Charlie and Maria Cardoso are among the millions of Americans who have experienced the misery and embarrassment that come with home foreclosure. Just one problem: The Massachusetts couple paid for their future retirement home in Spring Hill with cash in 2005, five years before agents for Bank of America seized the house, removed belongings and changed the locks on the doors, according to a lawsuit the couple have filed in federal court.

I hope they have a darn good lawyer.

The bank had an incorrect address on foreclosure documents — the house it meant to seize is across the street and about 10 doors down — but the Cardosos and a Realtor employed by Bank of America were unable to convince the company that it had the wrong house, the suit states.

Charlie Cardoso is an unemployed construction worker, and his wife is disabled. They paid $139,000 for the three-bedroom pool home in the tidy neighborhood a few blocks south of Spring Hill Drive, records show. It was Charlie's life savings, the complaint says.

"Their own real estate agent told them, and nevertheless Bank of America steamrolled right ahead," said Joseph deMello, an attorney in Taunton, Mass., who is representing the couple. "This is a nightmare for anyone, and it affected my hard-working clients a lot."

Source

A Little History Of Bank America

Bailout in one hand, wrong house in the other.

reply to post by Signals


Wow, I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. So they owned the house and BOA just took it by mistake and couldn't be bothered with the details.

Surreal...

Just have to hope that the court system will give them a nice settlement from Bank of America, they definitely deserve it for the stress caused.

The law requires that "punative damages" be an amount aggregious to the defendant relative to earnings - hence the $112M judegement levied against McDonanald's for the old lady and the scalding coffee. So... let's just see what happens here.

reply to post by kozmo


Concerning the old lady stuff and McDonald's

The woman eventually settled for about 665,000 dollars

The settlement was under 1 million dollars, and I would bet the lawyers got the lion's share of that, but anyway, a nice settlement for being stupid.

But this BOA situation. Wow! I hope this couple gets much more than BOA would ever want to pay to settle this.



[edit on 13-2-2010 by kyred]

reply to post by Signals


$&F friend ! Im glad that I paid off my parents house before BofA could jack up the interests rates on them. Pretty soon we will all end up homeless if the corporate banks keep ruling unchecked.

Originally posted by Digital_Reality
reply to post by Signals

 

Wow, I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. So they owned the house and BOA just took it by mistake and couldn't be bothered with the details.

Surreal...

Me too, I guess part of the problem was the couple lived in Mass. and rented the house out.

I'm gonna log off now because reading the story again makes me furious!

BoA probably used Google Earth to find the poor souls' address.

I have a neighbor who took out a home equity loan early in 2008 to pay off some credit debt they had built up from a failed business venture and do a couple of things around the house. They did it through the same bank they had used for over 25 years that they had never had a problem with.

Back in August, they had an offer to redo it with a lower interest rate that would make their monthly payment lower and lessen what they owed in the end so they did. The ink was barely dry on the paper when they got a letter telling them that their loan had been sold to/taken over BoA. They had no notice that this was going to happen, they just received a letter that told them. They received another letter shortly after that told them that Fannie Mae was now involved. They've had nothing but trouble ever since.

When they went to make their first payment, they were told to send it to one address on one statement, while another section of the paperwork told them to send the payment somewhere else.

After that they sent the payment to that address and were told that the payment wasn't received, even though the bank they sent the payment from showed it as having been received, BoA just didn't know where it was. They were assessed a late charge the next month even though the payment was documented on time, BoA just couldn't find it.

This went on until this month, trying to track payments. Then this month they were assessed another late charge, even though their payment was on time, according to their bank. They claimed that February's payment went for January's, January's payment went for December's, December's went for November's, etc.

These people had never missed a payment or had a problem in the 35 years they had owned their house. They've had more trouble because of the BoA's incompetence in the past 4-5 months than they had in all that time. They finally got a hold of someone who explained that this sort of thing wasn't uncommon. This person gave them their direct line and hopefully this will be the end of it. I hope it is for their sake because they've spent countless hours on the phone trying to resolve this garbage.

Corruption + Incompetence= Bad news. Hey, that sounds like our banking system and our government. Coincidence? I doubt it.

It seems to me this case goes well beyond tort law and civil suits, and has ventured into criminal law, and the couple should go to the Sheriff's Department and file a verified complaint, for illegal trespass, theft of property, and obstruction of justice.

WOW

I hope they get BOA for whatever they can. I'm sorry, well actually I'm not, but persons, especially "banks" should really research and get their facts straight before barging in and claiming things as their own.

I'm convinced Bank of America does these things on purpose.

I once had a credit cards & bank accounts with them and they were constantly changing rules, altering card due dates interest rates & so on. It seems they would do everything they could to try to get customers to pay extra fees.

reply to post by Signals


B of A is scum of the earth.

I have my own story with them, which I won't go into...but they are scum of the earth.

I hope B of A collapses. I don't care what it would do to the economy...I hope they go under.

The government never should have propped them up the way they did, because all they did was further empower a monster bank that had terrible ethics to begin with.

heck, I hope it promts the court system to really grill over the banks when it comes to these foreclosures!
ya know, like hey, do you have the legal documents that proves you have the right to foreclose on THIS house!
no, well, sorry, go back and get your papers in order and call of court clerk, she will place you in our next available spot, we're backed up about a year by the way, so well, you have plenty of time to make sure you know what house it is that you own!

[begin sarcasm]
Governments and corporations don't lie or make mistakes, only lower life forms (entities) like we people lie and make mistakes. Similarly, governments and corporations never conspire, only lowly human beings conspire. That's why the burden of proof is on them.
[end sarcasm]

[edit on 13-2-2010 by Crito]

reply to post by Parallex

applying for a special luxury room in cuba, are we....

some of us might be thinking about such things...maybe...but I think it might be a little dumb to suggest it....
ya know conspiracy to commit terrorism and all that...
I imagine you were only kidding, but well....
I wouldn't count on the gov't seeing the humor in your post!

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


I tend to agree. There was definatley criminal behavior at the root of this. The fact that after being provided information to the contrary, they still did what they did. Willful in my opinion. Although I am no lawyer. However large corps. like this are difficult to touch becasue you can never nail down the 1 or 2 people who administrated this.

Originally posted by djvexd
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

I tend to agree. There was definatley criminal behavior at the root of this. The fact that after being provided information to the contrary, they still did what they did. Willful in my opinion. Although I am no lawyer. However large corps. like this are difficult to touch becasue you can never nail down the 1 or 2 people who administrated this.

The buck stops somewhere and it is usually with the C.E.O., and that is who the verified complaint should be filed against. If that C.E.O. or President of the bank wants to co-operate with the District Attorneys office and supply evidence as to which human individual was responsible for this criminal activity, then that might be prudent, but failing that, the bank President bears ultimate responsibility. In terms of criminal activity such as this, very real flesh and blood people such as Jeffery Skilling and the father and son Rigas' who are currently sitting in prison due to their own criminal activity while running a corporation only demonstrates that finding justice in this matter is not only possible, it is probable.

reply to post by verylowfrequency


Here's one of my posts from another thread...

ATS Thread Post

You are absolutely correct, they do this on purpose.

When I paid my student loans off I got a call from one of the banks I had been indebted to three months later. They were quite ignorant for the better part of 30 min as they explained to me the legal process that was about to roll, the obligations that I just ignored etc.

When I finally was able to get a word in about the fact that it had been paid in full (and that the arrangements should be on file as I got a payout amount for a specific date) the guy couldn't find it in their records. He started about how I had probably sent it to the wrong address until I told him that my bank had sent them the money, not me.

It was unbelievable how ignorant the bank was over their mistake. I was also dumbfounded by some of thier requests...send us another check...pay the outstanding payments while we try to verify your claims...send us the original receipt.

It's scary what kinds of mistakes these companies make, it makes me wonder what their books really look like and how often they make these types of errors at the expense of the people.

reply to post by Graybeard


I have been living in US for 40 years. I never saw Bank or businesses ever made a mistake in favor of general public. It has always been around the other way. I had invested 25K in 2000 with BoA. I could only recover 8K in 2005. Bunch of crooks.