What is going on with the world? When you are doing well and have things in order there is no one to help you, but when life has thrown many curves then there are many to help. But are they really? No! Not all the people that are out to assist you when you are down, are not there to help but to prey on victims of circumstance.
We have found ourselves in this very situation recently. The astonishing part of it is that we are not the only ones that have been caught up in this particular scam. This, as told by our local Housing Authority, is a reoccurring situation that has happened to middle income families who had and have fallen on hard times with the economics as they are.
As soon as we became unemployed and found our income had changed and that it could affect our mortgage payments we called the bank for some kind of assistance. There were a few programs that would be able to assist us but how secure was the information that we faxed over to our bank. I am not sure. The following is the story of the fraudulent loan modification scam we have fallen victim to.
In June I was laid off from job of 5 years with Blackjack Inspection. I was able to keep up the payments for a few months after that but began to feel the economic pinch. I was receiving unemployment at time but that was just enough to make mortgage payment.in August we had receive a notice giving information regarding How to avoid foreclosures. Bethany Statter, who also resides at the home with me, called the 800 number to ask for assistance in my matter. She spoke with a gentleman that advised that Bank of America had a program called HOPE that was designed to help people in my predicament. He had given her a list of things he wanted us to fax over to the HOPE department. Such as, full name, loan number, bank statements, proof of income, and a hardship letter. We did this on August 15. Then we were called again by Janet in that department who asked if we could send over a list of our monthly bills, we faxed that over on Aug 18. Janet said that someone from the HOPE department would get back in touch with us in about a week.
About one week later a gentleman named Gene Pope called and said I am calling regarding your loan modification. He advised Bethany to go to a web site www.myhomeloanadvisors.com. To download paperwork that we needed to fill out. This made sense to us because we had just sent basic information in on a lined piece of paper.
We had much correspondence with them from late August to late January to get all the necessary paperwork in for review. We also paid $895. For the process of the paperwork. After February there was not much contact except when I received notices from the bank and the foreclosure notice the loan rep, Tara Callegari, said to fax them over and she will tend to them. We did all this still thinking we were working within the Bank of America HOPE program. We had email correspondence letting them know that we were becoming worried by the fact we had not heard anything about the completion of the loan and or when the new payment would be due. The reply, by email, came back to Bethany as do not worry these take time and there are no delays in your case.
We did not become completely aware of the scam until June 1 when a Demand for Possession notice was on the front door. Bethany at once tried to call Tara, the loan rep we had been working with, to find the number was not any longer affiliated with the WHC inc. We had checked emails, websites and a number of different fax numbers that we had to make contact with these people. There was no answer or reply from any of the numbers we tried.
We had called many different departments within the Bank of America Company. We had obtained different information over the next couple of days including that the HOPE program that we were looking into for assistance in our time of need. We had been told we were denied for these programs. We asked when was the denial letter was sent out but have not had a straight answer to that. They just say we were denied. If we had been notified of the denial it would have sent up a red flag to us that something was not quite right. We feel that there was been a few holes that we can see that occurred in the process of our account. Through this hardship I just want to remind the banks and their representatives that I had not missed a payment prior to the layoff as well as with the home I owned previously and just trying to find a resolution to our situation.
Now left at the mercy of the bank to try and rectify the issue and try to get out of the horrifying situation we have found ourselves in, only to find that the banks seem to be reading from a script and have robotic like answers to our situation. We have tried to find a real human person in some department hidden from the layman who would be willing to look this particular situation and pause to consider the devastation that it has caused for our family.
Thank you in advance for just reading this letter. We are just trying to get the word out to the public and save another family from going through the same situation that we have found ourselves. I would pled with you if this is a story you have heard before that somehow work as a public service and make it known to others can be educated in the scams that happen to people in hard times
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