Royal Crown Bank, now bought out by Fifth Third (with Fifth Third handling the account now and making decisions influencing the account) loaned us money to have a house built in July.
In March and April of with the house still unfinished, our contractor made three withdrawals from the account and spent none of it on the house itself. He was ultimately caught, and convicted, but the $80,000 he stole left the project in a red tape nightmare. He was convicted of Grand Theft in August. He left only the last draw money (about $25,000) in the account, in effect emptying it.
The house was unfinished, and between the liens, criminal investigation of the contractor, and the emptied account, we were left more or less unable to ever move into the home. We'd have to pay out of pocket to finish off the house, and were not allowed to explore using the remaining money to put towards the completion of the house. Fifth Third rejected that. They agreed however, to put the home up for Short Sale, which we did.
The property attracted attention, a lot of it, but they rejected every offer made (most by simply not responding to them). The worst of it was the bank not responding to a $220K cash offer on the property shortly after it hit the market. All told, they rejected or ignored almost twenty offers and declined helping us wash our hands of a property marred by contractor fraud and get some money for themselves.
The aftermath turned up an interesting bit of particpation in the thievery by Fifth Third/Royal Crown. The last three draws made by the crooked contractor resulted in his convictions. The second and third felonious draws were made without Fifth Third/Royal Crown getting a relase of lien from the workers who had been on the property, as they are required to do.
Had they done it, the contractor would have never tied the house up with red tape. He'd have been caught before the major damage was done to the account and to the property. Fifth Third/Royal Crown for their part, have simply ignored the information which includes verifiable proof that they failed to do their required parts in working with a contractor.
Taking a loan from this institution would be ridiculously stupid, and if anyone knows what agency to report them to, I'd gladly do it. It's been a pain in trying to find the appropriate agency who could investigate them, which is at this point what I'd like to see happen. Their actions coupled with their refusal to do anything about their blatant disregard for the policies related to construction loan add up to predatory foreclousures in my book, which is what they are threatening to do at this point.
We want this off our records, but have found that without their acceptance of a short sale, we've got only bankruptcy to explore. Seems to be a bitter fate to suffer, considering they allowed the blatant theft of $80K from our account.
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