OneWest a/k/a One Evil Bank: Did they sell your home too?
Game Called, Battle Lost!
This is a journey that started in July of 2008. It was a journey to save our home from the grips of the old IndyMac now known as OneWest, later dubbed by us OneEvil Bank. The journey ended August 8, 2012 when our home was sold by OneWest for more than the current market value, in less than an hour after it went on the auction block to a Korean immigrant who called us on the day he bought our home to ask "what wrong with you, what wrong with how-saa". Was he calling to gloat? Who gave him our phone number? When he told us what he paid, which was about $50,000 over current selling homes in the neighborhood that were much newer, we could only express our shock and say "good luck with that". He did not seem to understand that he had now become one of a million of people screwed by OneWest and their evil practices. Welcome to America!
The fact that we had our home on the market as a short sale for less than what this new buyer got our home for; and the fact the home sold so quickly made us wonder: was OneWest behind this purchase? Was this buyer some sort of ringer? At this point we would put nothing past OneEvil Bank, known for their fraud, deception.
Our story chronicling our saga from OneWest's aggressive "escrow audits" from the very beginning of their take over of IndyMac to their final deceit and illegally selling of our home has already been written in our hub entitled OneWest Bank, IndyMac and their New Owners can all go to hell http://askme.hubpages.com/hub/My-Personal-Hell-Known-as-Loan-Modification-Part-2. It is not our intention to rehash the whole sad story but to expose what happened to us after OneWest sold our home illegally and expose some truths about who OneWest is and their corruption.
For a little history, IndyMac our original lender failed and they were seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The FDIC immediately auctioned off IndyMac in 2008 and it was sold to IMB Holdco, LLC who was oddly the only bidder! Who is IMB Holdco? They are hedge fund investors, made up of Goldman Sachs people, Michael Dell and George Soros.
From what is written about the sale of IndyMac to IMB Holdco, there were conditions to the sales agreement with the FDIC. IMB was to continue with the loan modification program that was already in existence with IndyMac. Hummm so to get this straight...IMB was to continue with the loan modification program already in existence with IndyMac yet no one was overseeing the program to insure IMB was actually holding up to their end of the deal.
From our position IMB did anything but. Instead IMB started an aggressive on the attack practice of weeding out loans they did not want to service. From their mysterious "Escrow Analysis where they increased loan payments every month" to their "forced placed impound accounts" causing monthly loan payments to double and triple without any explanation as they did in our own case. IMB was to adhere to loan modifications, which they did not but still reaped the benefits of the loss/share agreement with the FDIC. They way it was supposed to work IMB was to be in compliance with the loan modification program and as such IMB would have a loss/share agreement with the FDIC (federal government, your tax dollars) in which the lion's share of the loss from a foreclosed loan would be paid by the government, IMB would get reimbursed for their loss on the loan, a loan they bought for pennies on the dollar, and then still be able to sell your home, our home, at auction. They stood to make a profit. And, IMB never upheld their end of the agreement by modifying loans for homeowners, but no one is enforcing or going after OneWest which IMB came to call their new bank.
OneWest in their short history, has had an infamous reputation for shoddy foreclosure practices. They so incensed a Long Island Supreme court judge Spinner, that he chastised OneWest attorneys calling OneWest's foreclosure practices "repugnant, shocking, repulsive and completely devoid of good faith" he promptly found in favor of the homeowner, Mrs. Horoski and owing no debt to OneWest. http://mandelman.ml-implode.com/2009/11/judging-indymac-%E2%80%93-new-york-supreme-court-judge-finds-indymac%E2%80%99s-behavior-%E2%80%9Crepugnant-shocking-repulsive-and-completely-devoid-of-good-faith%E2%80%9D/ We read this article shortly after the decision was rendered in November of 2009 and had hope that we too could benefit from the verdict and expose OneWest for what they truly are, snakes, predators and cheats. We soon learned that any attorney retain by struggling homeowners would be papered to death by the over paid attorneys who represent OneEvil bank. Attorneys we consulted with, meet with and gave us hope would soon find their firms investigated by California State Attorney Kamela Harris. Was it a coincidence or was it a set up by OneWest investors? One firm partnered by California attorney Phillip Kramer was making headway at exposing the fraudulent foreclosures by OneWest only to have the hammer come down on him and quickly disbarred. http://4closurefraud.org/2012/05/03/mass-joinder-disbarment-of-philip-a-kramer-pending-in-foreclosure-fraud-investigation/ What we find truly amazing is we were ripped off by an attorney named James Parsa in Costa Mesa, California early on in our attempts to receive a loan modification from OneWest. James Parsa (see our hub http://askme.hubpages.com/hub/My-hell-of-an-experience-with-trying-to-get-a-loan-modification) stole money from about 10,000 homeowners in California. He took approximately $3,500 from each of us, essentially $35 million and walked away. He resigned from practicing law (in California, he still has a valid law license in Nevada--beware) and no reporting to the State Attorney General rendered any response as it did to Phillip Kramer's firm. Was it because Kramer dared to go after OneWest where Parsa just ripped us homeowners off without so much as contacting our lender?
Over the years of our battle, we have gotten to know people who attempted to take on the massive OneWest on their own, representing themselves in court, pro per. The task became overwhelming and the legal manipulations by OneWest attorneys mind boggling. We learned unless you are up for the battle and in for the long haul, you better not even throw the first punch.
After OneWest screwed us and put us further in debt with their phony loan modification of 12 months, we had little fight left in us. OneWest lied to us. They wanted to appease us and get us off their sidewalk in front of the corporate offices on January, 2010 and gave us a made up modification which only served to put us deeper in the hole and increase the balance due. When April 1, 2011 came around (no coincidence it was April Fool's Day) and we learned the modification was over, we came to the conclusion the monster that is OneWest was too big of a Goliath for the two of us to take on. We had gone the route of retaining an attorney who stole from us, to consulting with no less than 4 more attorneys all of whom decided our case was just "too messy" to take, to hiring a foreclosure delay company that advised "90% of their delay practices succeed" only for us to be in the 10% that do not, to attempting to short sale our home which did not work after 90 days on the market. We made trips to the Los Angeles County Recorder's Office and pulled the documents on our home. We discovered that the first time OneWest tried to foreclose on us, prior to our staged protest in front of their corporate headquarters, OneWest transferred the deed of trust into their name on the same day they put our house up for sale! Frauds, they are evil frauds who work outside the law!
When we sent copies of the deed transfer filed the same day as the date of sale to the OneWest escalation specialist, he merely passed it off as "acceptable practices". Another OneWest executive gave us a different answer that "robo signing" is an acceptable bank practice. Anyone who has dealt with the dysfunction at OneWest learns this one absolute about OneEvil, depending on who you talk to at their organization (disorganization) you will get any one of a dozen answers. No one at OneWest knows anything. They are a financial institution the operates on misinformation and lack of training of their staff. No matter what evidence or documentation we sent to OneWest ever got to anyone in their offices who had a sense of wrong and right or a willingness to deal in good faith. We finally decided it was time to give up and strategically walk away.
One day we believe OneWest will be exposed. The current Obama Administration who was funded heavily by OneWest investor George Soros does not seem at all inclined to enforce the agreement OneWest investors made with the FDIC and to the contrary, investors are now planning on selling off their inventory of foreclose homes. Once more making profit on the backs of middle class Americans. (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/07/06/Obama-administration-to-sell-foreclosed-homes-to-vulture-capitalists)
Will we ever buy a home again? Probably not but definitely not unless we can pay in cash. These days having a home on wheels, an RV, is looking more and more attractive! We no longer want to be a slave to a bank or live on the edge of this ever changing economy.
