Banks Breaking into Occupied Homes, Stealing Items (Really) [View All]

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http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/12/22/banks-breaking-into-occupied-homes-stealing-items-really

Banks Breaking into Occupied Homes, Stealing Items (Really)
By: David Dayen Wednesday December 22, 2010 7:27 am

Over the past few months, we’ve been following perhaps the worst abuse by the banks in the foreclosure crisis – breaking and entering homes where they are foreclosing, changing the locks, and terrorizing the owners. The banks claim that they only do this with vacant homes, in an effort to keep out squatters, but it hasn’t worked out that way. There have even been reports of break-ins on homes where the borrowers are current on their payments.

Borrowers who have seen their homes broken into are fighting back and even suing the banks over this practice. If signing false documents and lacking standing to foreclose is too technical for the courts, perhaps breaking and entering will be what stops the banks’ reign of terror.

When Mimi Ash arrived at her mountain chalet here for a weekend ski trip, she discovered that someone had broken into the home and changed the locks.

When she finally got into the house, it was empty. All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter clothes and family photos. Also missing was a wooden box, its top inscribed with the words “Together Forever,” that contained the ashes of her late husband, Robert.

The culprit, Ms. Ash soon learned, was not a burglar but her bank. According to a federal lawsuit filed in October by Ms. Ash, Bank of America had wrongfully foreclosed on her house and thrown out her belongings, without alerting Ms. Ash beforehand.

Ash was in the middle of working out a loan modification when this happened. “This is in essence a burglary,” Ash remarked. The bank took her late husband’s ashes.

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