Is Chase missing documentation on ALL WaMu loans?

Just received this from a reader:

I talked with an insider at the FDIC and there’s STRONG indication that Chase does NOT have the original (paper) promissory notes and contracts to prove that it owns the $176 billion in loans that it bought from Washington Mutual for little more than 1% of the face value (they bought it for $1.88 billion and get to keep all our payments though they never loaned out that money originally and likely bought WaMu with our taxpayer TARP funds!).

The FDIC swooped in to minimize its own insurance costs…they shut down WaMu in ONE day and sold it to Chase for even cheaper than Chase’s cheapest offer to WaMu while WaMu was functioning. WaMu wasn’t allowed to receive bailout money, it was closed just 9 days before the TARP funds were given to Chase. As of nearly 2 years later, August 2010, Chase still hadn’t “completed” its purchase of WaMu yet has been collecting and enforcing those $176 billion in loans.

The FDIC also never SPECIFICALLY assigned any of the loan inventory to Chase. This means Chase has no specific proof that your loan belongs to it. Chase doesn’t have the original paper note (it was likely shredded and they only kept digital copies) and it likely doesn’t have any ASSIGNMENT CONTRACT proving that it owns your loan either. Since the FDIC sells off different assets piecemeal to different buyers, Chase wants us to believe that Chase bought everything at once, but there is no specific proof since the individual loans were never separately assigned/sold/inventoried. Chase might be trying to retroactively fake that documentation now, and they might just get away with it.

Chase begins charging WaMu customers who had “free for life” checking accounts $10/month now starting Feb 8th, 2011.

LET’S DO A RUN ON THE BANK and take out all our deposits on February 6-7, 2011 to MAKE THE POINT that Chase can’t keep our business with these tactics.

WaMu had only 9% of its deposits removed before the FDIC shut it down in ONE day (September 25, 2008). What if we get everyone we know with a Chase account to withdraw our deposits at the same time? If it exceeds 9% of Chase’s deposits, let’s see what the FDIC does and call their bluff on whether or not they legitimately shut down WaMu in the first place if they don’t do it again for Chase!

Chase representatives at high levels are aware of fraud in the origination of the WaMu loans but continues to deny fraud through its fraud department (no ethical conflict of interest there, right?) to keep customers paying, even though they DON’T HAVE THE PAPER PROMISSORY NOTES OR ASSIGNMENT CONTRACTS to prove that they have standing to enforce these $176 billion in loans through the courts. They are counting on customers being too scared to stop paying and get sued.

How can we get the word out as quickly as possible regarding withdrawing all our money from Chase by Feb 6-7, 2011? With smaller deposits, Chase won’t be allowed to make exponential new loans (for each $1 we have on deposit with them they can borrow 7x-10x from the Federal Reserve to loan right back to us at higher rates than what they’re paying on our savings and CD accounts, so withdrawing our money will have 7x-10x the exponential effect on Chase’s future business.)

Can you help me tweet this? I don’t have the following that you do to make this happen in time. Thank you!

There are a number of other indications that Chase is having trouble proving ownership of loans, including

1. A number of cases where it could not prove ownership and lost its foreclosure battle in court
2. The sending of unsolicited loan modifications to customers who are not behind on their payments. This could be a thinly veiled attempt to get them to resign loan documents to re-establish the document chain.
3. The explicit attempts to get customers to resign mortgage paperwork.

Given all these other indications we see that Chase is having trouble proving ownership of loans, it seems entirely plausible that Chase might have such a big hole in their loan documentation.

The devil made him do it

Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon has blamed new regulations for raising fees and forcing poor customers into the ranks of the unbanked, but several prominent bloggers are calling him out on that statement.

The truth is, once they lost the ability to bilk poor customers with lots of unreasonable and unregulated fees, they lost interest in “serving” them.

Congratulations Chase, Florida hates you!

This is great.  Chase is not very popular in Florida to begin with, as it has only 3% of that states deposits, and yet it accounts for 9% of complaints filed against banks in Florida.  The study’s author concludes the results like this:

Even the strongest banks, however, can have many complaints if they are not serving their customers well.

To compare Chase’s ranking in the study to that of other top ranking financial institutions:

Among other findings, a credit union cracked the Top 5 complaint list: Space Coast Credit Union, which assumed assets of the failed Eastern Financial Florida FCU. Saxon Mortgage Services, which assumed part of the mortgage portfolio of the failed Taylor, Bean & Whitaker operation, also ranked high for its size.

Yes, Chase is in the same class as banks that FAILED!

Chase looses yet another foreclosure case in court

Chase has lost another foreclosure case in court because it was unable to produce the original promissory note.

A Florida couple is staying in their home because the bank holding their mortgage could not prove they owed them any money.

According to a report at Ocala.com, the Reddick, Fla., couple admitted in court that it owed its bank money on their home mortgage. The bank in the case pursued foreclosure proceedings against them in an attempt to reclaim the home.

However, this Florida couple, like thousands of other homeowners across the country, had their foreclosure documents filed in court through the robo-filing process. Robo-filers were employed by the nation’s biggest banks and largest home-loan lenders to quickly file foreclosure proceedings against tens of thousands of homeowners who’d fallen behind on payments.

For Phillip and Viva Evans, they had fallen nearly a half-million dollars behind on their home payments and Chase Finance filed foreclosure documents. The Evans’ challenged the foreclosure process in court and when it came time for Chase to provide proof of the loan, it was learned they had lost the original promissory note.

Chase overcharges troops on mortgages

This story makes me wonder if this practice was deliberate because they felt as if they would never be caught?  And here is even more evidence that Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s statement that no-one is getting foreclosed upon that shouldn’t be is complete crap.  Here are more than a dozen families that WERE incorrectly foreclosed upon.

NBC News

updated 1/17/2011 5:22:50 PM ET 2011-01-17T22:22:50

One of the nation’s biggest banks — JP Morgan Chase — admits it has overcharged several thousand military families for their mortgages, including families of troops fighting in Afghanistan. The bank also tells NBC News that it improperly foreclosed on more than a dozen military families.

The admissions are an outgrowth of a lawsuit filed by Marine Capt. Jonathan Rowles. Rowles is the backseat pilot of an F/A 18 Delta fighter jet and has served the nation as a Marine for five years. He and his wife, Julia, say they’ve been battling Chase almost that long.

The dispute apparently caused the bank to review its handling of all mortgages involving active-duty military personnel. Under a law known as the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), active-duty troops generally get their mortgage interest rates lowered to 6 percent and are protected from foreclosure. Chase now appears to have repeatedly violated that law, which is designed to protect troops and their families from financial stress while they’re in harm’s way.

A Chase official told NBC News that some 4,000 troops may have been overcharged. What’s more, the bank discovered it improperly foreclosed on the homes of 14 military families.

“We are deeply appreciative of those who fight to protect our country and Chase funds a number of programs that provide benefits to military personnel and veterans, and while any customer mistake is regrettable, we feel particularly badly about the mistakes we made here,” Chase chief communications officer Kristin Lemkau said in a statement to NBC News.

She said that beginning this week Chase will be mailing a total of about $2 million in refunds to families that may have been overcharged. She says most of the families improperly foreclosed on have gotten or will get their homes back. A bank official described what happened here as “grim,” but emphasized the mistakes were inadvertent, not malicious.

The news comes as millions of Americans are struggling to keep their homes. Banks have come under fire for allegedly improperly foreclosing on homes across the country.

This wasn’t brought to light by Chase’s own internal investigation UNTIL they were sued by one of the wrongly charged customers.

Update:  Chase has agreed to refund $2,000,000 to the customers involved, which pegs the amount of overcharge at $500 per customer.

Chase looking to trick customers into correcting paperwork

Here is an interesting development sent to us by a reader:

I had a mortgage with WaMu and then Chase took over and THEY SUCK!  They harass me about modification even though I’m current.  Recently they sent a letter requesting I work with some lawyer to “re-sign” missing docs from my loan.  LOL. What scam is this now?

First, why does Chase continue to offer loan modifications to people that aren’t asking for them and aren’t behind on their loans?  Are they trying to force people into getting behind, which is what a trial modification will do?  Are they trying to increase their loan modification numbers by stuffing the ranks with people they are sure won’t fail, i.e. customers that weren’t behind in the first place?  I could certainly see them offering a very slight discount on customers not likely to default just to make their permanent loan modification numbers go up.

But perhaps most interesting is their attempt to get a customer to admit that they own his loan.  I highly recommend anyone against doing this, or if you intend to, consult an attorney first.

This just adds fuel to the speculation that Chase has gotten itself into a real paperwork mess where they can’t prove they own quite a few loans and won’t be able proceed with foreclosures in states that require proof of authority.

Reminder: not all debit transactions are subject to opt-in

Reader Melissa writes:

Hello, I noticed today that I had two overdraft fees on my account. I DID NOT opt in for the protection. My account has gone negative once or twice since the new policy, and not one overdraft fee. That changed today, One was for a .99 itunes transaction which they turned around and charged me $34 for, and the other was for my cable bill which I was short $20 on  my account. So since I did not opt in, they are supposed to decline right? How do I get my money back. Thank you, Melissa

What she’s found is one of the loop holes that banks have with automatic overdraft protection.

Electronic transactions like bills and online purchases where you’ve given a company like Apple your debit card number are not required to adhere to the automatic overdraft protection opt-in rules, so Chase can legally bilk you as before, and they do.

Just the facts mam

This story sound familiar to anyone?  Seems hard to just get the proper info from Chase customer service.

I had a very frustrating experience with Chase bank yesterday.

I wanted to pay down the balance of our home equity line of credit to zero. I did not want to close the account.

The pay down amount isn’t obvious on their web site, so I called their customer service.

The woman I talked to was clearly a script reading drone, as she could not give me JUST the information I wanted. She had to give me ALL the information that showed up on her screen.

The balance on the account was about $60 plus some variable interest.

The first amount she told me was to close the account entirely (which I explicitly told her I did not need) was around $500. This included the early termination fee.

The next amount she gave me was (supposed to be) the amount to bring the balance to zero. She quoted me $400!

I explained that the amount she gave me could not be right because my current balance was only $60.

So she had to log back into the account to get the breakdown. Since the call had already gone on for 25 minutes, I just told her to forget it and I would calculate the amount myself.

Back on their website I finally found the variable interest that was due: $0.46.

Unfortunately the website would not let me pay the full amount … I had to pay the current balance first, then pay the variable interest.

The last time I wanted to do this I was unable to make a payment less than $1 … So I had to make a $1 withdrawal so I could pay a little more than $1.

This time it let me pay the .46 without jumping through hoops.

I like many of the services Chase offers, but their phone customer service leaves a lot to be desired.