By Moe Bedard


It does not take a scientist to figure out that there is something very fishy going on with the lending giant of the sea and the smell is starting to stench up my blog. BIG TIME!
I am hearing it from all sides of the toxic loan spectrum. The struggling borrower that is losing their home as a result of an exploding adjustable rate mortgage with Countrywide and then from the homeowners looking for a no costs refinance and the BS answer they come back with when they ask for a simple good faith estimate.

The most disturbing stories I hear are from the insiders. The ex-Countrywide employees that give us a behind the scenes look of what really was going on behind closed doors. Ex-managers and ex-loan officers who want America to know what Mr. Mozillo was cooking in his top secret kitchen.

These are the accurate portrayals of the sneaky secrets and down right dirty business practices that helped propel CW to be the #1 lender in the country. I am just sharing these secrets with the American people because they need to be heard.

So, please do not shoot the messenger Mr. Mozilo.

Take for instance this story that was sent to me over the weekend. I suspect this must have went on quite a bit.

Email submitted by a woman named J (identity protected)

I could tell you quite a bit about when I worked there. I can also tell you about some more recent events.

I originated a loan for a borrower who did an equity buy out one year ago with her ex-spouse to be. She wanted to do an interest only loan for one year so she could adjust to the payment on her own. I ran her a sep. amort. schedule for if and when she wanted to pay principal payments also.

This loan DID NOT have a prepay penalty on it.

The loan was sold a few times and it ended up in CW hands She came back to me and decided to go ahead and convert over to a regular fixed rate. We were ready to close we obtained the payoff. My processor came up to me with huge eyes because there was this huge prepayment penalty added to the payoff.

He said, did you do this loan with a prepay? I said, no way, we don’t do prepays here!

He hands me the payoff. I immediately get on the phone with customer service and they pull the note up on their imaging screen and say, you are right this says there is NO Prepay. Please hold while I get the payoff dept on the line.

Oh then here comes the fun.

The payoff dept says they do not have the loan information and will have to order it from records management. I said wait a minute. The customer service rep I just spoke to just read me the ote word for word, don’t tell me you do not have this information. We were suddenly disconnected.

These events went on for days.

One Customer service reps said to me, “Even if the borrower didn’t know they had a prepayment penalty, it could have been added later without them knowing it.” OMG I completely lost my cool. I demanded a supervisor who tried to pull the same thing on me and then claimed they didn’t have the loan info. I said, “Wait, I am a former Branch Manager for CW and I know there is an imaging system right there on your software. She says, hold on just a minute. Gets back on the phone whispering to me that she will have me a corrected pay off within 24 hrs. I asked her why we were whispering and she said it was because there were other people by her.

Well, the payoff did not come. We had to threaten repeatedly to call the media and involve an attorney before the payoff finally came. This took a week and half to resolve.

My question is, how many people didn’t have someone like me in their corner and have paid these not knowing any better?

CW has two different origination systems. It would probably easier if we spoke on the phone so I can describe to you what they do to get around disclosing within the required time frame.

I questioned it back then and never felt comfortable with it. CW also has a policy on their employees bonus. “Bonus for this month will not be paid until the last business day of the following month, but you must be employed with CW in order to receive it.” So, if they term you on 28th and payroll is on the 29th you do not get your bonus for work you did the month before. When they let me go they owed me over $35,000 in earned bonus. They did this to all of the managers in my region.

Pretty slick, huh?









Categories: Home Loan News

__________________
Moe Bedard
Founder & President

Loan Safe Solutions - Forensic Loan Document Reviews & Loan Modification Processing
(951) 531-0148 ext. 267 Telephone
(800) 801-7979 Fax

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