UNBELIEVABLE BREAKING NEWS: Senior Couple Being Screwed
Royally By Mortgage Servicer – Specialized Loan Servicers
September 16, 2009
/ Martin Andelman -Mandelman Matters
H. Vincent and Theresa Price have lived in their home in
Alameda for 32 years. It’s where they raised their
children. They had always planned to leave it as their
legacy. They’ve NEVER been late on a mortgage payment…
to this day! And they never wanted or asked for a loan
modification.
Yes, everything was just fine at the Price home… until last
September… when their mortgage servicer, Specialized
Loan Services, made a mistake in their accounting
department. A simple mistake… they didn’t credit the
Prices for having made their August and September mortgage
payments, even though they most certainly did, just like they
always had, and on time too. Incredibly, less than five
months later they had lost their home to foreclosure.
And today, although Mr. Price lies in a hospital bed with his
wife at his side, they are scheduled to be LOCKED OUT by the
Pasadena Sheriff’s Department pursuant to an order by the
court. If everything goes as planned by the mortgage
servicer, when his doctors discharge him, the couple will be
homeless.
How is such a thing possible? Well, stay with me,
because I promise you… this is not a story you’ve heard
before.
According to the complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior
Court, on August 1, 2008, Mrs. Price made the couple’s
mortgage payment as she’s been doing for 32 years.
Certainly nothing remarkable about that. A month later,
when their September statement arrived showing that they owed
their September payment, she made their mortgage payment again.
So far, so good, right?
It was right around September 29th that the Prices were
notified that Specialized
Loan Services had not received their August or September
payments. Mrs. Price assured the servicer’s
representative that she had made the payments, and on time as
always, thank you very much.
The servicer requested proof, so Mrs. Price sent in her bank
statement showing that the payments had been made to Specialized
Loan Services, and the amounts were deducted from her
account on August 3rd and September 4th, respectively. The
Specialized representative called back to say they needed more
proof, so she sent them a more detailed transaction report
showing the payments having been made. Still, not enough
according to Specialized. So, Mrs. Price went to her bank
and had them print out her account’s record of the payment
being made to Specialized and sent that document to the mortgage
servicer.
The next call from Specialized came from a different
representative of the servicer. He informed Mrs. Price
that they had not yet located her payments, but that her proof
was acceptable and that they expected to soon. Meanwhile,
he assured her, the servicer was placing a waiver on the October
and November payments, a show of good faith, if you will, until
the missing payments were found. After a couple of weeks
passed with no further word from Specialized, the Prices called
to inquire as to the status of the situation.
They spoke with a woman who said her name was Lynette.
She told the Prices that their account was showing “CURRENT”
for August, September, October and November, that they should
make their next payment on the first of December, and that a new
accounting statement would be sent out.
When no new statement had arrived two weeks later, the Prices
called Specialized yet again. It was November 23, 2008 and
this time they spoke with another representative of the mortgage
servicer, “Ben”.
They asked Ben about the new statement that was to have been
sent out, but Ben had no idea what they were talking about.
He stated that he wasn’t aware of any sort of arrangement
regarding the couple’s August and September payments, and
further, now that they were four months late, if they did not
make the delinquent payments and associated late charges within
the next 24 HOURS… Specialized Loan Services WOULD FORECLOSE
ON THE PROPERTY.
You can just imagine what happened next. The Prices
began calling the servicer asking to speak with the three
representatives that had been speaking with over the last
several months… the ones that had told them about the waiver
and had been trying to find the missing payments. They
called… and called… and no one answered or returned their
calls. They then called the servicer’s Vice President of
Customer Service… and… nothing. No return call…
nothing.
It was January when the Prices received their first piece of
written communication from Specialized… it was a Notice of
Default and Election to Sell. Understandably, the couple
was speechless. How could this happen? How was this
possible?
The Prices were referred to a lawyer who said he was also a
minister; a man identifying himself as a Mr. Reginald Jones.
Mr. Jones told the Prices that he was highly experienced in
these matters and that he would file a lawsuit as soon as
possible. The couple would later learn that Mr. Jones was
not an attorney. What he had done was go into court,
appearing as a plaintiff by claiming that he had an interest in
the property, and file a frivolous lawsuit, which was later
dismissed by the court…. as it might go without saying.
Now, having been defrauded by the so-called lawyer-minister,
the Prices were forced to defend an unlawful detainer action in
pro per, meaning without an attorney. Unfortunately, they
were not successful as they were told that they could not
“litigate title in a summary proceeding,” which as I’m
quite sure everyone would agree, they clearly should have known.
They were advised that they should file an injunction, which
they did, but unfortunately they mistakenly filed their
injunction in the “wrong court,” and don’t we all hate it
when that happens.
(I’m sorry for the sarcasm, but this is the most outrageous
travesty of justice to which I’ve ever been exposed.)
The Prices searched and finally found an attorney they could
trust, Zshonette Reed of the firm Lorden Reed in Chatsworth,
California, but now it was only days before the Pasadena Sheriff
would be locking the Prices out of their home potentially
forever. As quickly as was possible, Ms. Reed prepared the
legal documents required for the filing of a Temporary
Restraining Order, or TRO, and with her clients at her side, and
confident that this horrendous injustice would not be allowed to
prevail, she appeared in Superior Court yesterday, September 15,
2009.
The Price home is to be locked up by the Pasadena Sheriff
today, although because that office is closed for a special
training day today, the event has been moved to tomorrow.
Astonishingly, the judge denied her motion for a TRO, ruling
that he had no jurisdiction over the judgment that had been
entered against the Prices in the unlawful detainer court.
So, immediately she and her clients proceeded to the unlawful
detainer court to ask that judge, in layman’s terms, to put a
stop to the madness.
It may be hard for a reader to believe, but that judge also
refused to provide the Prices any relief, because he said that
the attorney could not litigate title in that court. It
was a classic Catch-22. Ms. Reed couldn’t get relief
from the Superior Court because that court said that it had no
jurisdiction over the unlawful detainer court, and the unlawful
detainer court wouldn’t provide relief because you can’t
litigate title anywhere but in the Superior Court. Ms.
Reed begged the judge, explaining that her client’s home was
to be locked up by the sheriff the very next day. She
needed time to prepare to present her client’s case to the
appellate court. The answer was still no.
Ms. Reed and her clients left the courthouse shocked and
scared. Mr. Price was clearly distressed as was his wife,
and he was having a hard time breathing so he went to sit down
on a stoop. He went into cardiac arrest right there in
front of the courthouse and was rushed to the hospital where he
is today with his wife by his side.
Meanwhile, the Pasadena Sheriff is scheduled to lock the
couple out of their home today, although that looks like it
won’t be until tomorrow due to the department taking today off
for special training.
Can you even imagine the horror? After 32 years living
in your home, raising your family, never being late on a
mortgage payment… and then this? It’s unthinkable.
And it cannot be allowed to happen to the Prices or anyone
else.
The worst part is that, although this is certainly an extreme
case, it is far from being the only example of mortgage
servicers and banks disregarding the law, and abusing
homeowners. Why do they do it? I don’t know…
because they can, comes to mind.
How can a homeowner hope to go up against a bank or mortgage
servicer? They can’t. It would seem that even the
President of the United States and the United States Treasury is
having trouble getting these companies to behave like human
beings.
It’s time that the people of this country come to
understand what’s happening here. Past time.
Source: http://mandelman.ml-implode.com/2009/09/unbelievable-breaking-news-senior-couple-being-screwed-royally-
by-mortgage-servicer-specialized-loan-servicers/
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