August 4, 2011
These guys just keep getting more and more brazen. This latest scam comes out of American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. (AHMSI) who, as our readers know, was recently slammed in the In Re Veal decision as not having any standing to file a Proof of Claim in a borrower bankruptcy. AHMSI is the servicing unit of the now-bankrupt American Home Mortgage, which was sold out of the AHM Bankruptcy proceeding to a Wilbur Ross and which now is going around the country seeking to foreclose on mortgages which, we suspect, have been paid through one or more sources.
Up until now, all “loan mod” offers from servicers have come in the form of an inquiry letter as to whether the borrower is interested in pursuing a loan modification, and if so, the servicer sends a package of documents to be completed and returned to the servicer with certain documents relating to proof of income and expenses, etc. As we all also know, almost all loan mods are rejected after the borrower is subjected to multiple requests for more documents, or having to submit them time and again because the documents were “lost”, or for “updated” documents because the servicer sat on the documents submitted by the borrower for long periods of time with the servicer claiming that the submission was “stale” or “outdated”.
Yesterday, we were advised that a borrower, who is not in default, was told by AHMSI that in order for any loan mod application to be reviewed, AHMSI wants a fee of $600.00 if paid now, and if not, $900.00 later. Apparently AHMSI is trying to take money from the borrower to pay for its own ineptitude, and/or so it can get paid for going through the process of jerking borrowers around before the loan mod application is ultimately denied.
Bottom line: borrowers beware. You may have recently seen the article in the media that the major “banks” do not have sufficient cash reserves to pay their own attorneys to defend foreclosure challenges, so possibly this latest scam might also be an effort by the banks (who are the principals of the servicers) to roust up monies to pay their attorneys to beat up borrowers using the borrowers’ monies.
Jeff Barnes, Esq., www.ForeclosureDefenseNationwide.com