On May Paula Stitt at the Citifinancial office in Colonie New York contacted my wife Georgianne offering to refinance our home equity loan it was to be "on us, no closing costs" as part of a customer appreciation campaign. We decided to do the refinancing and had our closing on July 8. We left thinking it was a done deal.
Then on July 21 Paula said she couldn't send the mortgage payoff check as she was getting different payoff amounts from Texas. My wife had to call to get the payoff amount, she called three times and got an amount of $114,457.60 which was mailed out on August 4 by Paula Stitt, it was mailed overnite UPS. There was a life insurance attached to the mortgage which after we consulted with an attorney advised us not to pay since it was in a class action suit and would be taken care of by the court.
On August 8 my wife called Citifinancial in Irving, Texas and was told the mortgage was paid in full and we would be getting a overpayment check of $275.16 in 30 days. Then we received a statement from them effective 8/21/03 with a $0 balance $0 payment due, and listed as "paid out". On August 27 Georgianne got a call from Paula Stitt warning her that a Kristina Parker from Texas would be calling her.
When my wife got the call Parker told her that we still owed $10,867.20 on our old account, she didn't say what it was for just to pay it or they wouldn't release our property. On a call to Texas on 8/29/03 my wife spoke to a Keisha P. Who told her that our $275.16 overpayment was going to be applied to our insurance account, and that the issue was going to be turned over to a manager for review, I would like to add that by that time the class action suit had been settled in court and they wern't supposed to get any more payments for the insurance, also we never heard from the manager who was suposed to review the account.
My wife wrote to Parker on September 15 asking her questions about the money we were told we owed she also asked for copys of documents. She was ignored by Parker, we didn't get a reply to the letter, only more threats. They now had gone to Citi taking legal action. She also wrote to Ofelia Flores in Texas asking questions about our account. These questions were also ignored.
We contacted the NYS Attorney Generals office, NYS Banking Department, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection. The only help we received was from the Attorney General's office who advised us we should get a laywer. We also found out the life insurance policy they were trying to collect on was canceled effective August 4, a few days before Citifinancial in Texas received our payoff check.
On December 3 we hired attorney Warren Redlich to represent us. He wrote letters asking them to review our records because they had made a mistake, but as with our letters he received no response from them. Then on April 29 we recieved foreclosure papers, my wife, son, daughter, and I each got one, then on May 1 we received three more by mail for my wife, daughter, and myself. Shortly after receiving the foreclosure papers they had the nerve to offer to pay us $250.00 to pruchase our deed in lieu of foreclosure.
Our attorney was forced to file a counter suit against them in order to save our home.in the summer of 2004 our attorney got a call from a representative of Citifinancial stating they know something is wrong and they will investigate. Several months later they complated their investigation and dismissed the alleged debt and released our property {we didn't receive the official "morsfaction " document until January}.
Going back to the class action suit, which we were part of the class, we were supposed to receive a settlement amount of $2,137.41, but in a letter dated January 28 they applied it to our unpaid account, in the letter they had our account number which was our lod mortgage account not the life insurance and we had a statement with a $0 balance. After they cleared up the foreclosure we never got the class action suit money or the overpayment the theives don't feel they have to return it.
Our counter suit went to the Supreme Court in Albany, NY and when our attorney was two days late with an expert witness affidavit the judge dismissed our case, I would like to add that whenever the attorney representing Citifinancial did where he should have ahd santions filed against him the judge refused our attorneys request. We wanted Parker and Flores diposed during depositions instead the judge told our attorney who he could dipose at Citifinancial and had him fly to Texas to question someone who clearly didn't know anything about our case.
We filed with the Court of Appeals in Albany and also were dismissed by that court. Were out probably a total of approx. $5,000.00, Citifinancial gets to walk away clean as if they did nothing, we don't even get any answers as to why we were put thru 5 years of hell. I really don't know who is worse in this case, Citifinancial or the Supreme and Appeals Courts in New York State.
I've put complaints in on Judge Doyle of the Supreme Court with the Commission on Judicial Conduct and even with the information we sent that was dismissed, I also intend to put in a complaint on the five Appeals judges, but that will also be dismissed as one of the judges im putting the complaint in on is on the Commission on Judicial Conduct, nothing like a little conflict of interest in NYS.
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