Wamu Bankruptcy Complicates Jpmorgan Chases Plans To Foreclose
The United States Bankruptcy Court in Delaware entered an order finalizing plans to transfer all of all remaining Washington Mutual assets to WMI Liquidating Trust effective 3/19/2012. This would also close out the FDIC responsibilities as the Receiver for Washington Mutual.
When Shapiro, Fishman & Gache filed a Lis Pendens and a foreclosure complaint in November of 2012, naming U.S. Bank N.A. as Trustee Successor for Bank of America as Trustee Successor by merger to LaSalle Bank, N.A.
There was no mortgage assignment from the FDIC to JPMorgan Chase. There also was no mortgage assignment from JPMorgan Chase to the Trust recorded with Palm Beach County.
Shapiro, Fishman & Gache filed a mortgage assignment to the Trust four months after filing the foreclosure complaint.
MFI-Miami was able to prove the Trust was not the proper mortgagee. The mortgage assignment to the Trust after the liquidation of Washington Mutual showed the FDIC lacked legal standing to assign the loan to the Trust.
The mortgage assignment should have been assigned to JPMorgan Chase from WMI Liquidating Trust not the FDIC. To add further problems to JPMorgan Chases claims was the fact no one including U.S. Bank who the Trustee for the Trust could find the loan in the Schedule of Loans for the Trust.
Sls Allegedly Charges Illegal Mortgage Payment Fees
According to Barack, he purchased a home and secured a mortgage in September 2001. At some point after this, SLS acquired servicing rights to his loan, and he began making mortgage payments to the company over the phone. Barack claims he was charged $7.50 for making a mortgage payment to SLS over the phone on October 17, 2019. He claims that this fee was excessive, and is illegal under Texas financial codes.
Specialized Loan Servicing services mortgages across the United States. Although loan servicing companies are allowed to pass on charges from third-parties to consumers when these third-parties provide services to borrowers, they are prohibited from inflating these costs in order to pocket a profit. However, according to Barack and other consumers, this may be exactly what Specialized Loan Servicing is doing.
According to Baracks lawsuit, by industry standards it costs SLS approximately $0.50 to process a mortgage payment made over the phone. However, the company is allegedly charging between $7.50 and $12.50 to consumers for these payments. These fees are often referred to as pay-to-pay fees, and are not allowed under many financial laws. Additionally, these mortgage payment fees are not disclosed or included in Baracks mortgage agreement.
Baracks lawsuit seeks to recover damages on his own behalf, as well as on the behalf of other consumers who have also been charged illegal pay-to-pay fees by SLS.
Jpmorgan Chase Dumps Their Problem Onto Specialized Loan Servicing
JPMorgan Chase knew they had a serious problem with this file. So they sold the servicing rights to Specialized Loan Servicing 18 months into foreclosure litigation.
Specialized Loan Servicing soon realized they had just bought a steaming bag of dog feces from JPMorgan Chase. They instructed Shapiro, Fishman & Gache find an endorsed copy of the note which up until this time seemed to be non-existent.
Then last month, SLS produced a note with an endorsement stamp from Cynthia Riley, a former Washington Mutual executive. Because the endorsement was done in blank, anyone who had possession could foreclose.
Bill and Doreens attorney and I determined that we could win the case based on the mortgage issue but we could very well lose at the appellate level because of the blank endorsement on the note or if Shapiro, Fishman & Gache decided to refile the case based on the note issue alone.
Realizing that their client would be in for a costly legal fight over the property which had already cost their clients close to $750,000 legal fees and possibility that their legal bill would double if this case went to the Florida Supreme Court, Shapiro, Fishman & Gache offered the Bill and Doreen a settlement at the eleventh hour.
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Be Proactive With 2nd Lien Holders
This is one of the main reasons why it is important to be proactive in how you approach these second lien mortgages and evaluate and identify servicing errors and other issues early enough to put you in a position to negotiate down or address your second lien rather than being surprised at an unexpected time.
We have seen clients who have not heard from their second lien holder for 10 years and when they start the process to sell or refinance their property they are surprised by Specialized Loan Servicing suddenly showing up and submitting a payoff request with an inflated mortgage balance with unaccounted late fees, charges, interest and penalties. This can ruin any refinance attempt or makes the sale of the property not feasible.
Specialized Loan Servicing Warning Can Specialized Loan Servicing Validate Your Mortgage Debt Probably Not
Steve Dibert, CEO of internationally-renowned mortgage fraud investigation firmMFI-Miami, announced today thatMFI-Miamihas discovered serious flaws in the way Specialized Loan Servicing validates debt owed by homeowners. Specialized Loan Servicing is owned by Computershare out of Australia. As a result, MFI-Miami has issued a Specialized Loan Servicing Warning to homeowners.
MFI-Miami CEO Steve Dibert:
Homeowners need to request their complete mortgage transaction histories from Specialized Loan Servicing and review them. If there is missing information or if something doesnt look right, they need to contact a lawyer or a properly trained mortgage fraud expert immediately!
MFI-Miamihas examined nearly 150 transaction histories from mortgage loans currently serviced by Computershare subsidiary Specialized Loan Servicing since 2015. Nearly 140 of these contained serious accounting flaws in the transaction histories. These flaws would call into question the amount homeowners owe on their mortgages. Additionally, MFI-Miamis team of Forensic CPAs have described SLS transaction histories as everything from a mess to a trainwreck.
These flaws include 5-year and 10-year gaps in the transaction histories. They also include conflicting payoff figures on payoffs dated the same day. As well as transaction histories with fictitious and inflated payments made to local taxing authorities.
Steve Dibert also said:
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Specialized Loan Servicing Lawsuit How A Law Firm Can Help Protect You
A Law Firm that is familiar with second lien mortgages can really help you navigate and take action against SLS LLC for its common legal violations.
Unfortunately, we have seen issues with Specialized Loan Servicing not being responsive or taking requests from borrowers seriously until they retain legal counsel, and once you have an experienced law firm on your side you can take a proactive approach in first investigating how they came to acquire the servicing or ownership rights on your mortgage loan, whether they did so in compliance with applicable federal and state requirements, and if not, take the necessary action to assert the pressure needed to get them to respond.
Sometimes a Law Firm can successfully bring such issues to their attention and then utilize that to obtain a settlement of the second lien mortgage. In other instances, a Law Firm can properly set things up for a lawsuit against SLS LLC in situations where they fail to properly account for the total amount of the mortgage or blow off a Qualified Written Request.
The right Law Firm will know from evaluating the your specific circumstances and the underlying documents as to whether a lawsuit or a pre-lawsuit demand and negotiation is the best and most cost-effective option for you.
What If I Have Other Specific Questions
The SLS online mortgage payment FAQs cover just about everything you can think of, including login information, setting up an account, printing pages off the website, payment information , payoff information, escrow, loan information , adjustable-rate mortgage information, home equity loan, tax information and more.
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Specialized Loan Servicing Reviews
Mortgage company was fine. they sold my mortgage within a year and transition to new company had its issues. Not sure who’s fault that was, would have preferred to stay with SLS
I talked with Patrick and from the beginning, he sounded stressed and tried to cut me off without understanding my concern. I was seeking a resolution but the way he spoke with me was utterly disrespectful and when I confronted him for doing so, he became aggressive. If you want to stay in the business with these people, best of luck. I will be moving away from the company and the experience is horrible.
Specialized Loan Servicing Warning Sls Settles Lawsuit For Forced
Earlier this year, Specialized Loan Servicing agreed to a settlement that will resolve claims regarding unfair lender-placed insurance.
SLS customers can seek compensation for being illegally charged lender-placed insurance under the terms of the settlement
The plaintiffs also claim that this scheme and the process of choosing lender-placed insurance policies resulted in excessive fees and premiums.
The settlement settled all claims against Specialized Loan Servicing. Although none of the defendants admit any wrongdoing. Instead, a settlement provides an avenue for both defendants and plaintiffs to avoid the costs of further litigation.
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Specialized Loan Servicing Q& a
Information on this page is provided ‘as is’ and solely for informational purposes, not for any other purpose or advice. In addition, this information does not originate from us and thus, we do not guarantee its accuracy.
You can check the profile page of each professional or company to determine whether they are a paying advertiser . Regardless of advertiser status, none of the listings, reviews, or other information on Wallet Hub constitutes, in any way, a referral or endorsement by us of the respective financial company or professional, or vice versa. Furthermore, it is important to note that the inclusion of a financial company or professional on Wallet Hub does not necessarily indicate their involvement with the site or control over the information that we display. Information is displayed first and foremost for the benefit of consumers.
Editorial and user-generated content on this page is not reviewed or otherwise endorsed by any financial institution. In addition, it is not the financial institutionâs responsibility to ensure all posts and questions are answered.
Better Business Bureau Complaints
At the time of this writing, the Better Business Bureau reports that SLS LLC has a total of 737 complaints closed in the last 3 years, with 419 complaints closed in the last 12 months. BBB evaluates Specialized Loan Servicing at a 1 star out of 5 with 195 customer reviews.
One such review is as follows
SLS LLC Payoff Requests May Be More Than What You Owe
They are charging more then what I owe. They are using an old tax from 2018 to make it look like I owe more. When I call they keep hanging up on me and they never even tried to call back. Im a single mom and Ive had to work hard for everything that I own. I dont trust specialized loan servicing. I NEED HELP…………PLEASE CAN SOMEONE HELP ME!
Ketty J
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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Settles With Specialized Loan Servicing Llc
WASHINGTON, D.C. Today the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau settled with Specialized Loan Servicing, LLC , a mortgage-loan servicer in Colorado. As of February 29, 2020, SLS serviced a portfolio of mortgage loans worth about $112.69 billion. The consent order requires SLS to pay $1.275 million in monetary relief to consumers in the form of redress and waiver of borrower deficiencies, pay a $250,000 civil money penalty, which will be paid to the Bureau and deposited into the Bureaus Civil Penalty Fund, and implement procedures to ensure compliance with the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act and its implementing regulation, Regulation X.
The Bureaus investigation found that since January 2014, SLS violated RESPA and Regulation X by taking prohibited foreclosure actions against mortgage borrowers who were entitled to protection from foreclosure, and by failing to send or to timely send evaluation notices to mortgage borrowers who were entitled to them. These violations also constitute violations of the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010. In some cases, SLSs violations of Regulation X short-circuited the protections against foreclosure for consumers whose homes were ultimately foreclosed upon.
A copy of the consent order filed with the Bureau is available at:
How Lenders Are Preparing For A Wave Of Loan Modifications
For the first weeks of the coronavirus crisis, mortgage servicers were in triage mode. As the government issued a flurry of measures to deal with financial hardships resulting from widespread economic shutdown, servicers rushed to grant the CARES Act mandated forbearances for GSE conforming loans.
But as the growth rate in forbearances has slowed, lenders are gaming out their plans for the moment when the 12-month forbearance period ends, puzzling over how to prepare themselves for what may come next.
“How many people are ultimately going to request forbearance and how quickly will the economy recover?” said Peter Carroll, executive of public policy and industry relations at CoreLogic. “And based on that how many homeowners will the industry be having to assist?”
While the government has in recent weeks issued additional guidance, allowing borrowers to tack missed payments onto the end of Fannie and Freddie loans for example, many loans will still need to be modified. But the extraordinary amount of unknowns to do with the question of when and how widespread economic recovery could happen make it difficult to design proactive measures to get ahead of the problem.
Offering a consumer a modification at this point in time might be a waste of energy, for example, since investor and regulatory guidelines regarding these forbearances are in a state of flux.
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What Our Clients Are Saying
I was almost going nuts receiving calls every afternoon from a person using profane language to push me to pay debts I dont owe. Someone I trust referred me to Lemberg Law, and I dont regret having contacted them. The attorneys were very kind and always available when I needed them.
Thank you for standing with me Lemberg Law. I was so afraid I could lose my job because of a caller who called my job number 4 hours straight back to back. He not only harassed and threatened me but also abused workmates who received the call when I wasnt around. Since I solicited for your services, Ive had a peace of mind, and Im happy because of the few dollars I got as a settlement.
I just called in to thank you for the incredible help you offered to my sickly father who was bothered with frequent calls from scammers. At a point, he just wanted to pay them to get rid of all the annoyance, but because of Lemberg Laws assistance, he got free help, and the bothering calls ended immediately.
What Do I Do If Ive Forgotten My Password
Its never a problem to reset your password. On the Customer Login screen simply hit the forgot the password? link, which will then prompt you through the steps, including entering the email address associated with your account, and your SSN on the Secure Account Access page. Once youve submitted the information, you will receive an email with a new temporary password, which you can then change to a new permanent password.
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The Lender Gets To Choose The Servicer
While a borrower gets to pick the lender, the lender selects the servicer. So, you might end up with a servicer you dont like. After a lender sells a loan to an investor, that investor might prefer another servicerone thats different from the servicer the lender pickedand you then get a new servicer after your loan changes hands.
Generally, once a servicing transfer happens, the former servicer must give you notice about the transfer no less than 15 days before the effective date of the transfer. The new servicer has to provide a notice about the transfer no more than 15 days after the transfer date. The servicers can also decide to send a joint notice, no less than 15 days prior to the transfer.
What Are My Rights
There are various rights you may have depending on the manner in which SLS is seeking action on your second mortgage. If they are simply the servicer, then there are specific regulations that they need to follow in how they send you statements, how they apply the principal and interest, and how they report all of this to you periodically or when you make request in the form of a Qualified Written Request.
The first step in identifying your rights is to serve a Qualified Written Request and Request for Verification of the Debt on SLS. This triggers a host of federal regulations that require that they respond with specific information outlined in the QWR and within a set period of time. This serves the purpose of gathering what we call free discovery which is key documents that support their claim to ownership or the right to service your mortgage. This also puts the ball in the court of Specialized Loan Servicing to make sure they comply with the requirements of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act and the Truth in Lending Act. After doing so, the next step is to take a business approach by evaluating the equity in your property and determining how resolution of the second lien can help improve your financial situation and/or allow you to sell the property and/or refinance, depending on your ultimate goal.
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