Posted on 09/06/2012 9:46:03 PM PDT by rawhide
The owners of a modest home near Twentynine Palms lost their cherished possessions after a bank mistakenly foreclosed their residence.
A crew broke into Alvin and Pat Tjosaas’ desert home and took everything after being directed by Wells Fargo to secure the structure.
The couple, however, didn’t have a mortgage on the home.
Alvin said the deputy sheriff said, “Good news, we know who took (your possessions)…Wells Fargo. Bad news, your stuff is all gone.”
All the married couple has now are three generations of memories.
Alvin, a retired mason, built the home with his father when he was a teenager.
“I know every inch, every rock…my mom mixed all the cement by hand,” he said
A spokesman for Wells Fargo released a statement apologizing to the couple.
“We are deeply sorry for the very personal losses the Tjosaas family suffered as a result of their home being mistakenly secured,” said Alfredo Padilla. “We are moving quickly to reach out to the family to resolve this unfortunate situation in an attempt to right this wrong.”
Alvin and Pat remain distraught.
“When you put your heart into something…it makes me real sad. I’m just glad I have my sweetheart. We’ve been together a long time,” said Alvin.
(Excerpt) Read more at losangeles.cbslocal.com ...
WF is going to pay very handsomely for the mistake I am sure.
If I were Alvin and Pat, I’d own Wells Fargo AND THEIR “CREW” after my LAWYERS were done with them. The banks are out of control.
The directors of Wells Fargo are very lucky they did not take my home.
DEAD BEATS! This is the fault of government regulations! Dead Beats! It’s everyone’s fault but Wells Fargo! There will be FReepers along shortly to explain it to you.
TBTF? Hell, no. Take ‘em down and Buffet with them.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
Give loans to people who can’t possibly afford to repay them, then destroy the possessions of a family who has paid their bills and lived within their means. Nice.
Where is the accountability?
Ve are chust folloving orders. Ja.
The settlement amount will supply the family with sufficient funds for quite a while. Ka Ching.
Charge every single person who participated in, approved or oversaw this with grand theft, conspiracy to commit grand theft, fraud, burglary of a habitation and anything else that seems appropriate. Arrest them all immediately and publicly. No plea deals.
Do this with these people and the next few people that make this ‘mistake’ and watch how fast it stops. They aren’t cops, so they don’t have the shield of sovereign immunity.
WF will give them about 2 seconds profit to go away and move on.
This isn't the first time this has happened and it won't be the last.
I wouldn’t settle for less than the entire annual pre-tax profits of Wells Fargo as punitive damages, honestly. These people need to be taught a very painful lesson.
How long until before O-Bummer and/or Blyden blame Bush and use it in the campaign.
“Alvin and Pat remain distraught. “
I believe Alvin and Pat now own Wells Fargo.
Never said it would actually happen. But that’s what *should* happen.
Something about this story does not smell right.
You can’t randomly foreclose on people’s homes without due process of law, even in a non-judicial foreclosure state like California.
You have to have 3 months previous notice, notices published in the newspapers, a registered 10 day notice before the sale.
And not only that, you need a writ from the court to get evicted by the sheriff.
For once I’d like to see the death penalty imposed for something besides murder and treason.
The one responsible for this spirit-killing crime getting the honor.
“Just five minutes, Worm, Your Honor, Him...Me...Alone!
-Roger Waters/David Gilmour
There are plenty of people right here on FR who would argue different. Banks do not have to follow the law, they can forge document, commit perjury and fraud on a scale that would put most crime syndicates to shame and the most they have to do to get off the hook is pay a small fine while admiting no guilt.
You mean the people who bank at wells f——p will be paying that bill.
Are you being sarcastic?
Despite the nutty conspiracy theories, the US Constitution is still in effect and you can’t deprive a person of his property without due process of law.
No corporation can force anybody off their property, only a law enforcement officer with a writ from the court can do it.
And California is more litigious than most states when it comes to this stuff.
Just out of curiosity, why should it be that if a house is going to be “secured,” even if it has been legitimately foreclosed upon, for the sake of argument, that all the possessions should be destroyed or irretrievably disposed of? There could be plenty of value in the possessions, e.g. antiques, and they are simply not the bank’s property.
About 1% as sorry as you're about to be, if I'm on the jury, Al!
There are plenty of people right here on FR who would argue different. Banks do not have to follow the law, they can forge document, commit perjury and fraud on a scale that would put most crime syndicates to shame and the most they have to do to get off the hook is pay a small fine while admiting no guilt.
Sadly No I am not. Been following this for sometime. The amount of fraud and illegal behaviors especially in regards to securitized mortgages is staggering.
PS...CORRECTION:
Wells Fargoi!!!!
All those banks are effing crooks as far as I’m concerned.
Somebody signed off on this. If the law won’t deal with them, then that person needs to suffer in such a way that they beg for the law to put them in jail just to get relief.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Uh, there is a difference between Wall Street fraud and kicking people off their property without due process.
I would like to see one documented case besides this one where a bank kicked a person off their property without going through an legal mortgage foreclosure process and unlawful detainer lawsuit and writ of possession.
What an incredibly ironically sad statement to have to come from someone with such an uplifting handle! I do truly hope that the evil-will-win cynical projection you describe will not be the one that happens!
I affirm your FReeper handle: hopespringseternal!
Heisenberg reaction moment!
You have to have 3 months previous notice, notices published in the newspapers, a registered 10 day notice before the sale.
And not only that, you need a writ from the court to get evicted by the sheriff.
That's all well and good. However, it seems the "subcontractors" had the wrong address:
The house recently had valuables stored in the garage, including decades worth of family heirlooms. But the house was in ruins after Tjosaas says subcontractors hired by Wells Fargo entered the property with a foreclosure notice in hand. The notice had the name Stephen A. Janosik on it, but the address for the Tjosaas family home…Tjosaas says the subcontractors broke down doors, smashed windows, tore down walls, taking anything of value to sell later on.
I think all retirees should own and be proficient in the use of miniguns. There is no reason "subcontractors" (or other critters known for address errors) need ever to know their grandchildren.
Here’s an example Countrywide sells two blocks of 20 million dollars each in securitized mortgages, now they give the someone a loan for $200,000. As soon as they close they take the loan off their books and assign the mortgage bank and the money coming in goes into a pool pay the owners of the various securities, but they never official and legal assign it to anyone. Now they are just the servicing agent, but they don’t actually own the mortgage. In Countrywide’s case they go out of business being brought by BOA, but as I said the mortgages are assigned blank and now not only are the parties that should have done the assignment gone the time to registers them by law has pasted. This leaves the whole system open to fraud.
That’s the question I have. Even if the bank honestly thought that the house was to be foreclosed upon, the possessions would then be auctioned off to help pay off what might be still owed on the mortgage.
It takes time to put things up for auctions, because you have to catalogued everything, unless you sell it en masse, but even that takes time.
The stuff should have been secured.
The only thing I can think of is that whoever emptied the house might have bought it off the bank unseen, with the expectation of selling the possessions in part would allow for a profit.
New details on key figure in major housing fraud case indicted after exclusive 5 On Your Side report
There is TONS of this going on.
PING!!!
I met Marc Tow over 20 years ago, and he was a wheeler and dealer, then.
I had listings to sell several properties in downtown Long Beach, and he tried to scheme us and buy them with nothing down.
He is a lawyer.
My client-property owner lost everything, including his marriage, from his overly risky and highly leveraged gamble. Nice guy, architect-dreamer, Christian man.
But he didn’t fall for Tow’s scams.
Seems like the sheriff is taking Well Fargo’s side. He basically said we know who did it, but the property’s gone. Sorry.
“Ve are chust folloving orders. Ja.”
This did not fly in the courtroom in Nuremberg, and it won’t fly in ours either. Too bad the judgements won’t be as severe in ours.
I have rentals, the city sent out a Code enforcement for weeds. I called the tenant, lawn was mowed at the time it was written. The City worker wrote down correct house number, but the office clerk thought the 9 was a 7. Easy to do when people don't write plainly.
It actually was for the house next door, ending in #9.
Even the hospitals are making sure things are correct, hubby had back surgery recently, they used a magic marker to write on his back, instructions of where to cut. Too many stupid/needless mistakes can be made. Amazing but necessary these days.
This story is a sad situation for those owners, all their memories, can never get those items back. Sad
The bank has a title to your house (supposing a legit foreclosure) but they have no title to your stuff.
Once property is taken by a foreclosure crew it’ll be impossible to recovery. It’s scattered to the wind and likely in a landfill.
I understand that and quite agree with you on that.
But I’m saying that there is no way the bank did not know where it all went.
All this could have happened but then the idiot crew shows up at the wrong house.
OK, since you’ve obviously been living in another country for the past three years, here’s several:
1. Court-ordered foreclosure on a home which was bought for cash in Florida:
Since the bank can produce no verifiable documentation as to a mortgage being held on the property, they clearly committed a fraud upon the court at some point to get the court order. This is more common in Florida than other states, as the state has created fast-track court hearings to clear the foreclosure backlog.
2. Foreclosure on home in Massachusetts, again without any mortgage being on the property:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/27370429/Cardoso-v-Bank-of-America
3. In Texas, home seized, power shut off, 75 lbs of frozen fish subsequently thaws... with predictable results:
http://galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=4e1cfb1bebbf31e1
Oh, yes, and this home was owned free and clear. No mortgage.
4. Now for something different. BofA forecloses on someone who is current on their loan:
There are dozens of other cases around the country of free and clear homes being either given notice of foreclosure or being entered by people employed by banks.
What the hell happened to their belongings?
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