No matter what the law says money just can't make them whole again. If they lost everything then they lost pictures, moments, and shiat that had no other value then sentimental.

Screw banks, screw lenders, we need Glass-Stegal NOW!

What do they mean by "it's gone"? Did the bank's people physically destroy the items they stole?

I see two ways to make this right: A huge payout to the family (several millions).

OR, they should be forced to track each and every item stolen from the house, and return it to the rightful owners. Yes, that wouuld probably be difficult and expensive, but that's what you have to do when you make a mistake.

I watched this video yesterday, and had to wonder: was the guy even HOME when all this happened? or is this 'desert home' just a winter place which is seasonally occupied? B/c if I was there, I'd be straightening that shiat out pronto.

/my mortgage is with Wells... no problems... yet...

Gortex: What do they mean by "it's gone"? Did the bank's people physically destroy the items they stole?

I see two ways to make this right: A huge payout to the family (several millions).

OR, they should be forced to track each and every item stolen from the house, and return it to the rightful owners. Yes, that wouuld probably be difficult and expensive, but that's what you have to do when you make a mistake.

The stuff is likely at the local dump. Cleanup crews may pocket some 'interesting' items but in general it all gets thrown out. And it's not the bank's "people", it's some local bubba outfit doing the work. Now, the sheriff's office should be partly responsible, for marking the house to be vacated, but they're just going on what the bank tells them.

CognaciousThunk: Gortex: What do they mean by "it's gone"? Did the bank's people physically destroy the items they stole?

I see two ways to make this right: A huge payout to the family (several millions).

OR, they should be forced to track each and every item stolen from the house, and return it to the rightful owners. Yes, that wouuld probably be difficult and expensive, but that's what you have to do when you make a mistake.

The stuff is likely at the local dump. Cleanup crews may pocket some 'interesting' items but in general it all gets thrown out. And it's not the bank's "people", it's some local bubba outfit doing the work. Now, the sheriff's office should be partly responsible, for marking the house to be vacated, but they're just going on what the bank tells them.

Anything valuable has already been sold, that's the bonus of having a job like that.

Also 'mistakenly secured'? WTF?

Waiting for criminal charges to be filed against the negligent parties at Wells Fargo who authorized the break in and theft....

/waiting....
//still waiting....

I can't wait until the first time one of these shiat-eating banks sends someone out to the wrong house to break in and steal everything and the group they send out or some local sheriff winds up getting shot dead by the owner...

I also can't wait until we stop pretending these people shouldn't be going to prison. Under any other context this would be several felonies worthy of substantial prison time, but because it was a bank and because they stole everything it's "whoops, my bad!"

Why is it that some guy smashes a window and steals a box with a couple hundred dollars of jewelery in it he goes to prison for awhile, but a bank smashes a door and steals everything in the house plus the house itself they just pay a small cost of doing business and leave the victims to try and cope as best they can with everything they lost?

I wonder if the homeowner had been home and "stood his ground" and started shooting, how much he'd have been able to justify it. Local dumbasses that can't read house addresses yet are willing to completely trash and take your stuff because a computer screen or piece of paper says to really need to get some frontier justice handed them. No really, this is unamerican crap. We used to hear stories of how awful things like stormtroopers kicking down citizens doors happened in the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc. Now it looks like an idiot with a bad mapquest result can do it, and all you can do about it is sue.

"We are deeply sorry for the very personal losses the Tjosaas family suffered as a result of their home being mistakenly secured," said Alfredo Padilla. "We are moving quickly to reach out to the family to resolve this unfortunate situation in an attempt to right this wrong."

How, exactly, do you accomplish that? By offering the homeowners free checking for a year?

/How is this not criminal? Is it because it was at the behest of a big bank with deep pockets?

CognaciousThunk: Now, the sheriff's office should be partly responsible, for marking the house to be vacated, but they're just going on what the bank tells them.

If the Sheriff's office went on what WFC told them without a court order (or a court order on a different property) it's on the Sheriff. Full stop.

If the court wrote out an eviction order in favor of WFC for a property WFC didn't hold a lien on, it's at least partially on the court.

If WFC went to court with false documentation of their status in order to get an order, they're boned there, too.

Still not quite sure which of those scenarios apply here.

Some actuary will plug some numbers in a spreadsheet based on the size of the house, the relative age of the property and occupants and offer them $12,345.64 based on the "depreciated" value for everything they owned.

If there was any justice in the world he/she would immediately be shot in the face with a bazooka.

CognaciousThunk: The stuff is likely at the local dump. Cleanup crews may pocket some 'interesting' items but in general it all gets thrown out. And it's not the bank's "people", it's some local bubba outfit doing the work. Now, the sheriff's office should be partly responsible, for marking the house to be vacated, but they're just going on what the bank tells them

Whent he banks hire them, it is their "people".

Do you have another source that shows that the sheriff's office made the house "vacated".

Somebody from the bank (if they gave the roder witht he wrong adress) should go to jail for this until the property is returned or the people are paid off.

Glad to see that big foreclosure fraud settlement sorted everything out.

1. Call yourself a bank
2. Get a mob together
3. Break into houses and steal all the stuff in side
4. sell all of said stuff
5. if caught say oops
6. profit

We don't need any more regulations on banks now do we? If a group of criminals did this there would be RICO charges and the word mafia would be used.

This is why I'm no longer an American citizen. Last year I became an LLC in Delaware, as companies are people too I didn't loose any of my rights but now if I'm involved in a hit and run or if I steal something I just claim it as a corporate error and say we are looking into it. No charges.

This was a perfect example of how evil is: good people just going about their day, following orders, not questioning anything.

We need to know more to figure out exactly what went wrong, but at the very least there need to be better checks/balances on this to prevent it from happening.

And all responsible do need to own up.

What occurred is illegal.
File criminal charges.

Lawnchair: CognaciousThunk: Now, the sheriff's office should be partly responsible, for marking the house to be vacated, but they're just going on what the bank tells them.

If the Sheriff's office went on what WFC told them without a court order (or a court order on a different property) it's on the Sheriff. Full stop.

If the court wrote out an eviction order in favor of WFC for a property WFC didn't hold a lien on, it's at least partially on the court.

If WFC went to court with false documentation of their status in order to get an order, they're boned there, too.

Still not quite sure which of those scenarios apply here.

That is why you sue everybody from the dog catcher to the bank. If you are lucky you get multiple settlements.

"We are deeply sorry for the very personal losses the Tjosaas family suffered as a result of their home being mistakenly secured," said Alfredo Padilla. "We are moving quickly to reach out to the family to resolve this unfortunate situation in an attempt to right this wrong."

The way you "right this wrong" is to have the bank pay this family millions of dollars, to the point that they're set for life. That won't replace their stolen family pictures, or their daughter's preserved wedding dress, or mom's diary from when she was young, but it will at least provide them with something of substance in place of them. It will also make banks more likely to see these seizures as the enormous life-changing events they are, with huge financial repercussions if they fail to take every precaution to do it right. It's not about "punishing" the bank so much as it's about making them pay attention by using only thing that matters to them: money.

arcas: "We are deeply sorry for the very personal losses the Tjosaas family suffered as a result of their home being mistakenly secured," said Alfredo Padilla. "We are moving quickly to reach out to the family to resolve this unfortunate situation in an attempt to right this wrong."

How, exactly, do you accomplish that? By offering the homeowners free checking for a year?

/How is this not criminal? Is it because it was at the behest of a big bank with deep pockets?

The law generally says the bank has to make you whole, now that is interpreted that the bank must pay you the value of the goods that you lost plus damages. I imagine they are negotiating over the final price, the bank probably came up with a figure around 10-15 thousand and the home owner wants more.

Unless the home owner refuses to settle the bank will eventually hit a number everybody can agree on. Personally I'd love to see this case go to court and the bank get slapped with a huge fine.

Barricaded Gunman: "We are deeply sorry for the very personal losses the Tjosaas family suffered as a result of their home being mistakenly secured," said Alfredo Padilla. "We are moving quickly to reach out to the family to resolve this unfortunate situation in an attempt to right this wrong."

The way you "right this wrong" is to have the bank pay this family millions of dollars, to the point that they're set for life. That won't replace their stolen family pictures, or their daughter's preserved wedding dress, or mom's diary from when she was young, but it will at least provide them with something of substance in place of them. It will also make banks more likely to see these seizures as the enormous life-changing events they are, with huge financial repercussions if they fail to take every precaution to do it right. It's not about "punishing" the bank so much as it's about making them pay attention by using only thing that matters to them: money.

Meh, they will not get millions, I'd highly doubt it even crosses into six figures, not for personal property.

To be fair, the house does look abandoned anyway.

File criminal charges if possible, but, more importantly, sue Wells Fargo for so much money that it'll get their attention.

Only way this is ever going to change.

Why is it no one ever goes to jail for this kind of BS? You can't just go into someones house and take all their shiat.

Slaves2Darkness: Barricaded Gunman: "We are deeply sorry for the very personal losses the Tjosaas family suffered as a result of their home being mistakenly secured," said Alfredo Padilla. "We are moving quickly to reach out to the family to resolve this unfortunate situation in an attempt to right this wrong."

The way you "right this wrong" is to have the bank pay this family millions of dollars, to the point that they're set for life. That won't replace their stolen family pictures, or their daughter's preserved wedding dress, or mom's diary from when she was young, but it will at least provide them with something of substance in place of them. It will also make banks more likely to see these seizures as the enormous life-changing events they are, with huge financial repercussions if they fail to take every precaution to do it right. It's not about "punishing" the bank so much as it's about making them pay attention by using only thing that matters to them: money.

Meh, they will not get millions, I'd highly doubt it even crosses into six figures, not for personal property.

The bank already offered them $260,000.

buzzcut73: abhorrent1: Why is it no one ever goes to jail for this kind of BS? You can't just go into someones house and take all their shiat.

Because they 'settled' all of the state lawsuits over mortgage fraud by creating a fund 'to help the homeowners' that everybody knew was really earmarked to go into each state's general fund (at least a large percentage of it) and the states were happy to let them keep doing what they were doing, including robosigning eviction papers.

This happened after that.

Slaves2Darkness: Meh, they will not get millions, I'd highly doubt it even crosses into six figures, not for personal property.

Dude, how much do you estimate all the major appliances, furniture, jewelery, clothing, power tools, gardening tools, and personal electronics in an average home are going to be, especially if that is a home that has been mortgage free for it's entire existence. That's the thing about owning your own home. It frees up a LOT of your income to acquire stuff, and a house has a lot of stuff in it.  I'm not sure I could replace everything in my house for a quarter of a million, and I only own a lot of it because multiple parents and grandparents gave my ex and I a bunch of stuff when we bought it.

MugzyBrown: abhorrent1: Why is it no one ever goes to jail for this kind of BS? You can't just go into someones house and take all their shiat.

They were probably operating under some sort of court order.. so the state and their employees are never accountable for anything.

I'm not a lawyer but this is my assumption: in order to get those court order the bank had to submit paperwork showing that the property owners had a mortgage with the bank, the bank had a lien on the property and the owners were in default. If the bank did in fact submit paperwork to a court stating these three things as fact when they were most definitely not fact, they should very much be liable for compensatory damages as well as punitive damages.

I hope they sue for eleventy brazillion dollars and win.

Arrest every member of the board of the bank and put them in general population with no bail.

Its only right. corporations are people are they not? They are its brain, this should be why the earn the big bucks. Nothing makes a paycheck earned seem more exciting than risking a corn-holing by a 6.4 inmate named bubba.

 

/better watch yourself Wells Fargo

max_pooper: MugzyBrown: abhorrent1: Why is it no one ever goes to jail for this kind of BS? You can't just go into someones house and take all their shiat.

They were probably operating under some sort of court order.. so the state and their employees are never accountable for anything.

I'm not a lawyer but this is my assumption: in order to get those court order the bank had to submit paperwork showing that the property owners had a mortgage with the bank, the bank had a lien on the property and the owners were in default. If the bank did in fact submit paperwork to a court stating these three things as fact when they were most definitely not fact, they should very much be liable for compensatory damages as well as punitive damages.

Well stated.

The issue here is that the bank shrugs it off - "Oops, my bad, we're cool now, right?". To the bank it's a typo followed by a nuisance and a small payout; to the homeowner, it's a violation of the security of his home, it's the theft of possessions and personal effects, and a major headache to deal with.

The bank is clearly liable from a civil standpoint, and hopefully they offer appropriate monetary compensation. The bank's failure to double check the paperwork is pure negligence, and should also be treated as a criminal matter. Someone at the bank signed the paperwork, vouching for its accuracy in front of a court (hopefully it was a court and not some third-string bureaucrat). At a minimum, this person should be facing charges for making a false statement, at a maximum he should be facing fraud charges, breaking and entering, and larceny charges.

/still waiting for some sort of legal consequence for this.... I really should find a more comfortable seat...

I would bet the foreclosed upon home squatters took the foreclosure paperwork off their front door, walked it down the street to this vacation home they knew nobody would be at for a few weeks, and bought some more time staying rent-free.

The local bubba outfit (I loved that term CognaciousThunk), didn't look at the paperwork they were given, they just drove into the neighborhood looking for the paper on the front door, in, throw everything in the house into the dumpster, haul it off and call it an early day.

In all, I would bet people were following orders / gonig about their routine, but the defaulting homeowner just took measures to keep himself in the house longer (or just screw with someone who was better off than himself).

Slaves2Darkness: No matter what the law says money just can't make them whole again. If they lost everything then they lost pictures, moments, and shiat that had no other value then sentimental.

Screw banks, screw lenders, we need Glass-Stegal NOW!

Glass-Steagall TOTALLY would have prevented this. Good call.

eKonk: The bank is clearly liable from a civil standpoint, and hopefully they offer appropriate monetary compensation. The bank's failure to double check the paperwork is pure negligence, and should also be treated as a criminal matter. Someone at the bank signed the paperwork, vouching for its accuracy in front of a court (hopefully it was a court and not some third-string bureaucrat). At a minimum, this person should be facing charges for making a false statement, at a maximum he should be facing fraud charges, breaking and entering, and larceny charges.

/still waiting for some sort of legal consequence for this.... I really should find a more comfortable seat...

LOL. The banks own this country and our lawmakers lock, stock and barrel. They ARE the law. It's been well established that there was widespread, rampant fraud in the run-up to the housing collapse. The robo-signing scandals have been well publicized. We know for a fact that financial institutions took mortgages that they knew were crap, chopped them up and bundled them, paid off the ratings agencies to give them a AAA rating, and then sold them to investors as being completely safe, knowing full-well that they were not. How many prosecutions have there been? We get a story on Fark at least once a month about a bank illegally seizing somebody's home when they never even had a mortgage with them, or a mortgage that was paid off. How many bank executives are sitting in prison right now? The banksters are the new American aristocracy, and royalty does not follow plebeian laws.

mod3072: eKonk: The bank is clearly liable from a civil standpoint, and hopefully they offer appropriate monetary compensation. The bank's failure to double check the paperwork is pure negligence, and should also be treated as a criminal matter. Someone at the bank signed the paperwork, vouching for its accuracy in front of a court (hopefully it was a court and not some third-string bureaucrat). At a minimum, this person should be facing charges for making a false statement, at a maximum he should be facing fraud charges, breaking and entering, and larceny charges.

/still waiting for some sort of legal consequence for this.... I really should find a more comfortable seat...

LOL. The banks own this country and our lawmakers lock, stock and barrel. They ARE the law. It's been well established that there was widespread, rampant fraud in the run-up to the housing collapse. The robo-signing scandals have been well publicized. We know for a fact that financial institutions took mortgages that they knew were crap, chopped them up and bundled them, paid off the ratings agencies to give them a AAA rating, and then sold them to investors as being completely safe, knowing full-well that they were not. How many prosecutions have there been? We get a story on Fark at least once a month about a bank illegally seizing somebody's home when they never even had a mortgage with them, or a mortgage that was paid off. How many bank executives are sitting in prison right now? The banksters are the new American aristocracy, and royalty does not follow plebeian laws.

There's nothing you wrote that I can argue with. But I am still waiting for criminal charges to be filed.

/Although it's nearly lunch time, maybe I should get something done while I'm waiting...

mod3072: eKonk: The bank is clearly liable from a civil standpoint, and hopefully they offer appropriate monetary compensation. The bank's failure to double check the paperwork is pure negligence, and should also be treated as a criminal matter. Someone at the bank signed the paperwork, vouching for its accuracy in front of a court (hopefully it was a court and not some third-string bureaucrat). At a minimum, this person should be facing charges for making a false statement, at a maximum he should be facing fraud charges, breaking and entering, and larceny charges.

/still waiting for some sort of legal consequence for this.... I really should find a more comfortable seat...

LOL. The banks own this country and our lawmakers lock, stock and barrel. They ARE the law. It's been well established that there was widespread, rampant fraud in the run-up to the housing collapse. The robo-signing scandals have been well publicized. We know for a fact that financial institutions took mortgages that they knew were crap, chopped them up and bundled them, paid off the ratings agencies to give them a AAA rating, and then sold them to investors as being completely safe, knowing full-well that they were not. How many prosecutions have there been? We get a story on Fark at least once a month about a bank illegally seizing somebody's home when they never even had a mortgage with them, or a mortgage that was paid off. How many bank executives are sitting in prison right now? The banksters are the new American aristocracy, and royalty does not follow plebeian laws.

Putting aside your rolling stone inspired derp, why would a bank employee be criminally liable if they didn't intentionally do something illegal?

Wells fargo is of course civilly liable, and if it isn't settled a jury will decide how much damages to award to the couple. But should a trucking company executive be jailed every time one of the trucks gets into an accident? Should the mayor or chief of police be prosecuted if the police don't get to an accident in time to save a victim because they got lost on the way? Should a principal be imprisoned because a kid who has nut allergies was exposed to another kids lunch that contained peanuts?

Of course this was a fark up and the bank should make the other party whole. But assuming criminality is a tremendous stretch here.

tdyak: I would bet the foreclosed upon home squatters took the foreclosure paperwork off their front door, walked it down the street to this vacation home they knew nobody would be at for a few weeks, and bought some more time staying rent-free.

The local bubba outfit (I loved that term CognaciousThunk), didn't look at the paperwork they were given, they just drove into the neighborhood looking for the paper on the front door, in, throw everything in the house into the dumpster, haul it off and call it an early day.

In all, I would bet people were following orders / gonig about their routine, but the defaulting homeowner just took measures to keep himself in the house longer (or just screw with someone who was better off than himself).

Uh, there was no mortgage on the house.

Debeo Summa Credo: Wells fargo is of course civilly liable, and if it isn't settled a jury will decide how much damages to award to the couple. But should a trucking company executive be jailed every time one of the trucks gets into an accident? Should the mayor or chief of police be prosecuted if the police don't get to an accident in time to save a victim because they got lost on the way? Should a principal be imprisoned because a kid who has nut allergies was exposed to another kids lunch that contained peanuts?

If a trucking company is deliberately negligent and encourages it's drivers to do illegal and dangerous things, then they should probably be charged. I wouldn't be shocked if they were charged for routinely, for example, liying about their drivers hours, or whether their drivers were qualified to drive the vehicles they are driving. Or, for example, if they routinely sent their drivers to steal other company's trucks, and then just told them, don't worry those are totally ours.

Someone with more legal expertise than myself (read: any): Explain, right now, how this isn't illegal.

Debeo Summa Credo:
Putting aside your rolling stone inspired derp, why would a bank employee be criminally liable if they didn't intentionally do something illegal?

Wells fargo is of course civilly liable, and if it isn't settled a jury will decide how much damages to award to the couple. But should a trucking company executive be jailed every time one of the trucks gets into an accident? Should the mayor or chief of police be prosecuted if the police don't get to an accident in time to save a victim because they got lost on the way? Should a principal be imprisoned because a kid who has nut allergies was exposed to another kids lunch that contained peanuts?

Of course this was a fark up and the bank should make the other party whole. But assuming criminality is a tremendous stretch here.

The issue isn't intent, but negligence. If a trucking company doesn't do safety inspections on their trucks, and one gets into an accident, then yes, whomever allowed that truck to be on the road should be held criminally negligent. If a principal is aware of a kid with a severe peanut allergy and does nothing to limit the potential exposure of peanuts from other kids at lunchtime, then yes, he whould be held criminally negligent. If a bank is foreclosing on a house and fails to verify that the house on the paperwork is the one they have the legal standing to foreclose upon, then yes, the person who signed off should be held criminally negligent for any damage to the house or loss of possessions.

If we held people to this standard, maybe we wouldn't see it happen so often. I know I'd double-check my paperwork if failing to do so could land me in a criminal court.

max_pooper: I'm not a lawyer but this is my assumption: in order to get those court order the bank had to submit paperwork showing that the property owners had a mortgage with the bank, the bank had a lien on the property and the owners were in default. If the bank did in fact submit paperwork to a court stating these three things as fact when they were most definitely not fact, they should very much be liable for compensatory damages as well as punitive damages.

Here's the real problem. There is nothing in the process where the court or the cops FREAKING TALK TO THE HOME OWNER FIRST.

We all know mistakes happen and banks suck. But shouldn't foreclosure and confiscation require attempting to contact the home owner and hearing their side first?

If I was the home owner I would hire the law firm of Kraken, Kraken, and Kraken, and then release them.

eKonk: Waiting for criminal charges to be filed against the negligent parties at Wells Fargo who authorized the break in and theft....

/waiting....
//still waiting....

Never happen. The taskmasters and plantation owners are now fully in charge. Whatever rights we once had as citizens are now dissolved.

SpectroBoy: Here's the real problem. There is nothing in the process where the court or the cops FREAKING TALK TO THE HOME OWNER FIRST.

We all know mistakes happen and banks suck. But shouldn't foreclosure and confiscation require attempting to contact the home owner and hearing their side first?

Most likely the owners of house that the bank meant to forclose on were notified and somewhere along the way someone screwed up and type in the wrong address or someone transcribed something wrong.

Someone at Wells Fargo needs to go to jail for this.

Nexzus: tdyak: I would bet the foreclosed upon home squatters took the foreclosure paperwork off their front door, walked it down the street to this vacation home they knew nobody would be at for a few weeks, and bought some more time staying rent-free.

The local bubba outfit (I loved that term CognaciousThunk), didn't look at the paperwork they were given, they just drove into the neighborhood looking for the paper on the front door, in, throw everything in the house into the dumpster, haul it off and call it an early day.

In all, I would bet people were following orders / gonig about their routine, but the defaulting homeowner just took measures to keep himself in the house longer (or just screw with someone who was better off than himself).

Uh, there was no mortgage on the house.

?????

Did you read my post?

The homeowner with a mortgage, that was being foreclosed upon, took the foreclosure notice taped on his door off his door, walked it down a few houses to one where he knew people were not staying and put the foreclosure notice on that house. Problem solved.

The other house, that had no mortgage, now has the foreclosure notice placed on it. The homeowners, with NO MORTGAGE, are not home to see someone did this and are not home during the week or two the notice stays taped to the door.

Then, the local clearing unit, with the correct address on their paperwork clipped on their clipboard, just drive into the neighborhood looking for the foreclosure notice taped on a door. They do not look at their clipboard, because it has the 5 houses they have to clean that day and Bubba Joe want's to kick off early and it's quicker just to look for the taped paper on the front door. So they see the foreclosure notice ON THE WRONG HOUSE and secure that house.

The person in Foreclosure stays in his foreclosed home for a few more weeks while the mess unfolds.

I apologize if my initial post was unclear, but I did not state anything about the secured house having a mortgage. That is immaterial to the problem.