What Happened to 'What's-their-names?'

They're so much like everyone else in the neighborhood that you don't pay much attention to them. There's just nothing that
attracts your attention. The fact is, you only know them as John and Terri, and some of the time you have to ask your spouse
if it's John and Tammy or is it Jack and what's-her-name? The longest conversation you've had with either of them was less
than a minute.

Cars go in and out of the garage; if on the odd chance you see one of them you wave and smile; their kids, like most, leave
their scooters and bikes in any number of places from time to time. The newspaper disappears every day, the lawn gets
mowed, sprinklers turn on and off early in the morning and the trash goes out.

Most of us like routine, non-disturbing, non-intrusive neighbors. We march through our lives and probably feel better that
what goes on a few doors down or up has no meaningful impact on us.

But when we start to notice things about our neighbors, then we start devoting small amounts of mental energy to figuring out
what's going on. Curiosity is natural and it's the life-blood of gossip for some. For others, when there are enough clues to get
your attention the detective gene kicks in.

One evening you pull into the driveway and see that their lawn looks a bit longer than normal. It dawns on you that you didn't
see their recycling bin out on the curb. You put two and two together and avoid any more distractions by guessing
what's-his-name is out of town on a business trip or maybe they're on vacation. The newspaper isn't piling up so it looks like
someone is taking care of that for them.

For a few more days, behind the fog of everything else on your mind you notice the lawn is still getting longer. But you've
already classified that as (John? Yes, John) hasn't gotten around to it or they're out of town. Besides, what you've seen of
Terri she isn't going to go out and push a mower around in the heat.

Almost unintentionally, one of you brings it up when you drive by on the way out to dinner. "You think they're on vacation?"
Comments get made. The two of you come and go at different times. There's the filling in of bits of pretty-much useless
information. After talking casually about it, all it does is add up to low-level curiosity. There are more important things going
on in your life so concern about a neighbor's yard just doesn't qualify as something to do anything about.

The next weekend you notice the lawn not only hasn't been mowed, there are some places that are showing the stress of not
being watered. You casually walk over and take a slightly closer look. Sure enough, most of it is at that crunchy-dry stage.

The good Samaritan in you wants to save the grass and help your neighbor, so you muster up your best "I was just noticing
the sprinklers weren't running..." kind of personae and step up to the door. You're willing to offer to at least get some
much-needed water on the lawn if (John?) is ... what? What has happened? Is he sick? Was he in an accident?

Knowing how much you hate people coming to your door uninvited, you actually breathe a slight sigh of relief when no one
comes to the door. Then again, you didn't hear a doorbell when you pushed the button. So you knock a couple of times. Still
no one responds. Then you realize you haven't seen their yard lights on at night. Like an idiot it dawns on you that you're
weak in the detective gene.

The house is empty.

You look around a few seconds more to confirm your new suspicions. You scan the neighborhood and you're pretty sure no
one is looking, so you peek in a couple of windows. It's hard to see through the blinds, but it becomes pretty clear no one
lives there.

On your way back to your home, you can't resist looking in their mailbox. If anyone asks, you're going to collect it for them -
and as it turns out, it's almost full. Looking quickly at the mail you actually discover the last name of your former neighbors
and wonder for the thousandth time how it is people live around people they really don't even know.

Most of what you find is the ordinary junk mail, including their copies of stuff you've already thrown away. But there is
something unusual about several of the envelopes. You aren't familiar with the names on the return-address corners, but a lot
of them have those attorney-sounding name combinations or things that somehow reference "buying homes." There are some
postcards, and a few of them in brilliant colors. "We can save your home," seems to be the common theme.

Save your home? Save it from what? Now you realize you've probably intruded too far into someone else's business. You
decide to leave the wad of mail to the postal service. They'll take it and do whatever it is they do with mail that piles up. But,
why isn't the mail being forwarded? They've moved out of the house, did they forget to have their mail forwarded?

When you get back home you let your spouse know. "They must've moved," you announce.

"Moved? Who moved?"

"John and Terri. I went over to see if I could save the lawn. The house is empty. The mail box is crammed full."

"Really?" your spouse asks. "When did they move?"

"It's been at least a couple of weeks. The lawn's dying."

And that's pretty much the end of it as far as you're concerned. The real estate sign you'd expect to have gone up (if you had
been paying attention) appears in the yard that weekend. A lawn service company comes by and a small army of guys gets
the yard cleaned up. That night you notice the yard lights come on again. As you stand at a window sipping coffee the next
morning, you see that the sprinklers are back on schedule and in a few days the dry, brown areas are recovering. You make
another quick trip over to take one of the real estate flyers from the box on the sign. The asking price seems about what you'd
have guessed and you put the flyer back.

Life goes on. Your curiosity fades into the background.

After a few weeks of cars driving by and people coming and going in and out of the house, one of those moving vans is out
front. When the new neighbors finally get the opportunity to introduce themselves, the "people who used to live here" only
come up briefly. You explain you didn't really know them and tell them of your good Samaritan effort to save the lawn.

Harwood? Hardy, Har-something? The new owners don't know them at all. You stand there and chit-chat and file that
away in the "I don't understand but it's none of my business" drawer and don't think about it.

As you walk home your spouse finally asks the question you thought about but weren't bold enough to ask: "How do you buy
someone's house and not even know who they are?"

Another of life's many unanswerable questions passes you by and the neighborhood returns to normal.

***

If someone could take you back into the world of John and Terri during the last six months or so, the view from inside their
lives and their home would have disturbed, alarmed and eventually angered you. You would not have imagined what
happened to them was possible. The ugly downward spiral of emotions that they rode on their way out of the memories of
their neighbors isn't unique. The grim and emotionally debilitating experience is repeated all too often.

For our own emotional stability, it's a good thing we don't see the private little details of some people's lives. The fraying then
unraveling of the fabric of a family in real life isn't like what we're used to seeing on television and in movies. Instead of a few
minutes or a couple of hours of bad things happening to good people, the trauma of what is done to real families inflicted over
months, sometimes years is real.

Their emotional scars are often permanent. Some families don't stay together. Relationships that may have already been
strained aren't often resilient enough to survive these kinds of episodes.

And in far too many cases, if you did go back in time to find out what precipitated the entire tragedy, you'd have to decide for
yourself if they were actually victims or if they somehow did something wrong.

There is a common saying that bad things sometimes happen to good people. It's true. Life has a way of handing out
misfortune at random. But there are people that feel God or maybe even Mother Nature or "karma" somehow evens life's
score against "bad people." This sense is so strong that there are folks who not only condemn victims for bad things
happening but they'll even blame themselves as having been evil if something "bad" falls their way.

Those feelings and beliefs are one reason some people won't seek help, even if they can afford it. Keeping such things private
hinges on the emotions of pride, and its opposite, shame. For those who can't afford help, not having someone to turn to only
compounds their misery.

Helplessness is quickly followed by despair. It is in those moments that turn into hours and days that the worst of the
emotional damage is done. What couldn't possibly have happened to "good people" has happened so maybe all of this misery
is because you somehow deserve it.

But what if you really are "good people?" How on earth can this happen?

***

John and Terri, along with tens of thousands of others have had to deal with "how" and "why" on a level most of us have not.
Then there were some unspoken questions. Exploring answers to those was even more painful. He began to blame himself for
the slow upward pace of his career; if they had the money they'd get an attorney, he had thought. She condemned herself
for maybe giving off signals that she thought he was somehow to blame.

The stresses of fear, almost constant worry and the gnawing realization that their world was changing made them withdraw
from their small circle of friends. Every time the phone rang the tide of emotions rolled back in. They stopped answering the
phone and dreaded listening to the messages and the questions about "how things are?" and the comments, "we haven't heard
from you guys."

They told themselves there were worse things that could happen. They were right. They soon lost their home and their equity.

John and Terri quietly suffered as victims of a scheme so simple and easily operated that from the outside, it doesn't even
appear to be illegal. In fact, few of us would even believe that businesses would, let alone could, get away with it. And it
certainly couldn't happen to us - obviously in part because it hasn't, but also, it won't because we're "good people."

We work, we pay our taxes, we pay our bills, we might even go to church and do things to support good causes. So did John
and Terri and most of the other victims.

***

Sometimes a business just happens to thrive on economic circumstances. There are business cycles and there are
entrepreneurs who seem to hit a niche just at the right time. Sometimes there's a success as a result of the confluence of
seemingly unrelated business or economic circumstances.

And then there's the world of financial services, particularly in the mortgage arena, where we find the unique field of "loan
servicing."

The uniqueness comes from the industry's position of absolute power. Because of the enormous importance placed on
homeownership by politicians, the financial industry has the ultimate say in regulatory affairs. He who has the gold makes the
rules; if they don't like a proposed regulation or law, pity the poor politician who is blamed for the fact that there just doesn't
seem to be any money available for loans.

There are new regulations that are designed to protect borrowers on the front side, where loans are originated. Those have
been brought forward to control predatory lenders taking advantage of people who just didn't know any better.

But in the case of victims like John and Terri, what happened took place months, sometimes years after they signed their
loans.

Aside from operating out of the limelight of regulatory scrutiny, the scheme hinges on several things:

• Having unquestionable authority to decide how payments are processed and how accounts are credited.

• The ability to add charges and fees without substantiation.

• Credit data reporting and uniform scoring systems used by lenders.

• A growing pool of borrowers and loans labeled as "higher-risk" whether they really are or not.

Without all four, it just doesn't work out in the absolute favor of the loan servicer.

Of the four, the credit data reporting and scoring is crucial to profitability and continued growth. Negative reports effectively
create a sub-prime class of consumers that have to pay higher interest rates and pay for Private Mortgage Insurance. That is
one of the reasons the industry fights so hard to keep consumers from being able to effectively control their credit information.

Once a loan is established, the simple reporting of late payments (even if they are not late) prevents the victim from being able
to refinance the mortgage or getting out of the PMI policy. The borrower is locked in a cage and only the loan servicer has
the keys. It should not come as a surprise that two of the largest operators of these schemes are actually owned by mortgage
insurance companies.

There are laws against providing erroneous credit data, but even if they were enforced (and they rarely are), the servicer has
the simplest of solutions: Process the payment as late. If the borrower goes to the trouble to use traceable delivery and has
proof that the check was delivered on time, the answer is to apply a fee or charge and credit those first, leaving the principal
and interest short. Once again, the mortgage is effectively late, and it will be at least 30 days before the victim even knows it.

What most consumers don't know is that servicers even use notifications from the credit bureaus to determine if their
borrowers are applying elsewhere for refinancing. The servicer is in a key position to act to prevent losing the higher-interest
loan by ensuring a payment or two is reported as late.

Once the borrower is out on the slippery slope with no alternatives, the threats of losing the home can be highly effective in
fabricating forbearance agreements that generate enormous profits. In these arrangements, if the borrower has the income to
make the larger payments every month, the servicer takes the additional money and watches, knowing they can work the
cycle again if the opportunity presents itself. Every time the process is repeated it makes more money for not only the
servicer, but for the specialized attorney firms that handle foreclosure filings - and the money comes from the victim by being
added into the loan.

If the borrower doesn't have the income and doesn't have the resources to hire an attorney, the path to foreclosure and loss of
the home is short - usually about the amount of time it takes for a lawn to turn brown.

Until someone in Washington decides that this kind of business practice should be outlawed, there will be more opportunists
stepping in to profit. There was legislation moving through Congress that would have at least required loan servicers to notify
borrowers when they send negative data, thus providing an early-warning that the scam was underway, but HR 2622 has
been lobbied into impotence at the behest of the lending industry.

Sadly, no future legislation will make the victims whole, financially or emotionally. Equally as sad is the fact the people who
crafted these schemes have made themselves wealthy and will probably never have to answer to anyone, let alone pay
anything in restitution.

Until there are representatives willing to listen, the dream of homeownership for many is going to turn into a painful nightmare
at the hands of some very clever businesses.

More and more people will be asking, "What happened to 'what's-their-names?"