Tweet
Over six months ago, I wrote a piece for The American Prospect about something I dubbed “camo-washing,” an effort by big banks to prove their attentiveness to the foreclosure crisis by going out of their way to compensate military families for violations of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. These violations included egregious behavior, like moving to foreclose on active duty military while they served overseas in combat. And the banks moved swiftly to deliver mounds of retribution to those military members and the entire military by extension, promising to hire veterans and giving out free homes to those wronged by the scandal. As I said at the time, “Banks are hoping that by compensating members of the military for improper foreclosures, they can boost their public image and avoid responsibility for the broader foreclosure crisis and the truckload of violations committed against civilian borrowers.”
This has continued to happen. Yesterday, a day before Veterans Day, the Justice Department announced a settlement with Bank of America over violations of the SCRA. Each military member wrongfully foreclosed upon will receive $116,785, PLUS compensation for any lost equity when the home went into foreclosure. It comes out to about $20 million for 160 homeowners.
Let’s recall that the penalty for wrongful foreclosures slated to be paid in the foreclosure fraud settlement being bandied about right now, according to reports, is around $1,500. It is not out of a lack of respect for the men and women of the military when I say that they are not worth 78 times more in compensation for these crimes than everyday men and women abused by mortgage servicers.
And these are crimes, though the DoJ won’t follow through on that. The press release announcing the settlement very pointedly calls the incidents of wrongful foreclosures “the bank’s alleged violation of the Servicemember Civil Relief Act (SCRA).” In the same sentence it says that homes were “unlawfully foreclosed on,” but clearly this is yet another case where the bank won’t have to admit wrongdoing, and can just pay their way out of the problem. As the Justice Department states clearly, violating the SCRA, particularly through an illegal foreclosure while the servicemember is in service, is considered a criminal misdemeanor “which is punishable by a sentence of up to one year imprisonment.” (see page 7 of the linked pdf) Even this extraction of justice falls short.
The servicemembers caught up in this mess deserve that money, all $116,785 of it. And so do hardworking civilians who were duped into loans, ravaged by an Wall Street-caused economic meltdown and stonewalled or outright abused in their effort to save their homes.
Consider this. RealtyTrac announced yesterday that foreclosures were back on the rise, because “lenders corrected foreclosure paperwork and processing problems,” according to its CEO. This is a falsehood. There is plenty of documented evidence showing that robo-signing is still happening. In the states where banks cannot get away with robo-signing, they have all but stopped foreclosing. The backlogs in these states will take several decades to clear. What this all means is that many thousands of American homeowners each month are subject to the same violation that befell these servicemembers – illegal foreclosures. The military members, by virtue of the clout of their institution and a banking industry looking to burnish their public image, are getting a handsome sum from the banks for their troubles. The rest of the borrowers can go jump in a lake.
And this is becoming a pattern. The Senate yesterday passed the “Veteran Employment Displacement of Other Job Applicants Act,” which gives large tax credits to companies that hire veterans, giving them a leg up on any job opening without adding to job growth in any way. The same day, the First Lady announced a private sector commitment to hire 100,000 veterans. Considering that the private sector will collect between $5,600-$9,600 a head for the hiring, I guess so!
A veteran deserves a job, and a military family illegally kicked out of their home deserves as much compensation as possible. Also, the engineer who’s been out of work for two years, and the former teacher looking for a job, or the marketing manager, or the stock-room clerk, or the executive assistant – all of them should have that opportunity as well. And when the banks rip a home away from any one of these people, they deserve justice and accountability too.
16 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
agreed, but that is not going to happen in the current world we live in
This is as good a chance a any to lock up a bank corporation “person” or two as the law reads ,which now includes corporations beings that they are “people” too…
“corporations beings that they are ‘people’ too…my friend…”
Just could not resist the add-on :-)
Well, now they’ve set the price, it’s left only to apply the same process, and level of restitution for everyone else.
Agree. The Senate voted something like 94 to 1 in support of the bill to give companies a tax credit for hiring returning vets. But everyone one of the GOP who voted for this voted to obstruct — not even come to a vote — other bills that would have encouraged hiring the unemployed in general.
So what will happen is that there is modest level of hiring going on which would have happened anyway, and businesses will get credits for doing what they would have done anyway, but the few jobs will tend to go to a select few, and no one else, while the Congress tell us they take care of vets.
“Banks are hoping that by compensating members of the military for improper foreclosures, they can boost their public image and avoid responsibility for the broader foreclosure crisis and the truckload of violations committed against civilian borrowers.”
Nice try? These banks should be treated by America the way a disrespected father disowns a son. “You’re dead to me.”
Superb analysis and writing as usual David.
Allowing banks to get away with their crimes by cherry picking a subset of a huge number of victims isn’t fair. No doubt this is why Republicans voted for the jobs for veterans bills, to help banks defray their costs (a vote in direct opposition to “let the marketplace decide & govt should be out of the marketplace”).
But this entire theater of focusing on veterans–the politically safe maneuver–rather than any other group is clearly politically motivated, the safe choice for the president’s advocacy (heavens forbid he should advocate on behalf of unemployed African Americans!) Who can argue that veterans don’t deserve better treatment after giving service and risking their lives to fight in places they probably shouldn’t have been fighting in? It’s too bad this has to be a special focus whereby the job creators have to paid to consider a veteran for a job. So what about older Americans, what about black Americans, what about college graduates? And what about all the people who lost jobs, went through savings, fought futilely with indifferent, criminal banks to keep their homes only to be evicted to the streets? What about their compensation?
I cannot applaud this as a victory; it leaves a sore taste in my mouth.
Don’t you know that some ‘people’ are just more equal than others?
They’re trying to buy loyalty.
NIce piece David.
But perhaps our biggest problem in the country, among some real whoppers, is that we have LOST “justice and accountability”. If we can restore that, lots of the other problems will go away.
The value of good public relations can never really be measured. But the cost of not doing it can be catastrophic.
By coincidence, I see this. That the same foreclosure mill which mocked defendants at a past Halloween party, and was complaining about having to comply with the New York affirmation order, got whacked over an affirmation order.
Yup. Steven J. Baum, p.c.
http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/2011/11/10/u-s-bank-n-a-v-solorin-nysc-dismisses-complaint-abandoned-steven-j-baum-pc-plaintiff-attorney-affirmation/
When I returned from Vietnam companies were receiving tax breaks for hiring veterans. I don’t think any of them realized the disruptive potential a bunch of combat vets can have in a work environment where the workers are treated like complete pieces of shit, the way UPS, FedEx, and other companies tend to treat their hourly workers.
I believe that is “mounds of restitution” currently supplied, as opposed to the ‘mounds of retribution” already heaped upon them by foreclosure.
Exactly. After November 2012 you can expect that the government will go back to kicking veterans around again just like they kick around the rest of the citizenry.
Nice reporting David, as usual.
The settlement of the overdraft fees case against BofA has been announced.
Seems while there was no rule against apply the largest check first against the current balance – causing more small checks to bounce and get hit with the $35 per bounced check fee – there was not much notice to the customers, so BofA is refunding everyone with a bounced check fee over the last 5 or so years $27 each – that is $27 to each person to cover all fees ever paid during that period.
Of course BofA put in the $175 per day max fee for bounced checks a few years ago – when they did not have to do so – so you can say they were more “consumer oriented” than the regulators required. But then the “hold” on “out of area checks” that caused the bounce was not nice either, given that the Fed never put a hold on giving them credit for those checks in the overnight clearing.
But I guess $27 is better than nothing – and stops folks from going to small claims court and losing because there was no law or regulation broken – just a Bank not being nice.
And indeed since the practice existed at some “friendly” local banks and credit unions – and they are not doing a refund – maybe BofA may be the class act of banking – the bar to jump over to get “class act in banking” having been set so low.