OFF THE WIRE
I know it's not directly Biker related, but since a lot of us are Vets...JP Morgan/Chase should be investigated and charged with crimes. Anyway, here goes,
A Chase official tells NBC News that 4,000 U.S. service members may have been illegally overcharged on their mortgages and that as many as 14 military families were wrongly foreclosed on.
The overcharges may never have come to light but for Rowles, 31, and his wife, Julia.
* “It’s been a nightmare. It’s been my living nightmare,” Julia Rowles said of her experience with Chase, in an interview with NBC News in Beaufort, S.C.
The saga began in 2006 when Rowles went on active duty. Under the SCRA, he could get his mortgage interest rate, which was adjustable and rising, lowered to 6 percent.
But Chase took a few months to lower Rowles' rate, overcharging the family, Rowles says, by as much as $900 a month. In the fall of 2006, Chase finally began charging Rowles the correct 6 percent rate. For the next year or so, everything went relatively smoothly.
Then, two years ago, the Rowles family says, Chase began hitting them with collection calls that escalated to sometimes three a day, claiming they owed as much as $15,000.
* "Saturday, Sundays, middle of the night. It did not matter if it was a holiday," Julia said. “Collection calls at 3 in the morning. He would state, "I'm in California. I'm stationed here in Miramar. It's 3 in the morning. What are you doing calling me?" "Well, sir, this is an attempt to collect a debt."
She said they threatened to take the house and report the family to a credit agency, even though the Rowles family didn't owe the bank anything and never missed a payment.
The Rowles' records show that while they kept making payments on their mortgage at 6 percent, the bank wrongly had been charging them at rates above 9 or 10 percent. They kept calling the bank to explain there had been a huge mistake but say no one would listen. They say they kept being harassed for money they did not owe.
Fed up, Capt. Rowles got a lawyer and sued Chase, for himself and other members of the military.
"They ought to only have to worry about fighting the fight and keeping alive, not about whether their wives and children and going to be put out on the street," said Dick Harpootlian, an attorney for the Rowles family.
The lawsuit is still pending. But a Chase official now tells NBC that Rowles did everything right, and the bank did a lot wrong. (The bank maintains, however, that it previously refunded the initial overcharges of the Rowles family. The couple disputes that.)
"We made mistakes here and we are fixing them," said Chase spokeswoman Lemkau.
"We now have a dedicated team in place devoted to servicing home loans for military personnel —the members of our military deserve nothing less. We welcome the opportunity to talk to Captain Rowles and others who would like to discuss their accounts," she added.
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