As this previous post explained, our mortgage servicer, Bank of America has been having a hard time determining just who holds the Note for our mortgage. The answers have been inconsistent and convinced us they do not really know who owns the Note. We just received  a copy of the “Milestones” for our note that was generated by the MERS system.

As the document clearly shows, the Note was sold by Najarian Loans, Inc.(now NL, Inc.) to Bank of America (BAC) on May 27, 2005. At the time it was actually sold to Countrywide and we assume the records were later changed to reflect BAC’s purchase of the rotting corpse of what had been Countrywide.BAC then sold the Note to Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc. (LBHI) on June 30, 2005. And the final sale was from LBHI to Wells Fargo as Trustee. This information is all consistent with what the MERS system has shown over the years we have been checking.

We filed our lawsuit in February 2012 and named Wells Fargo N.A. (WF) as a party because BAC sent us a letter in October 2011 saying WF was the investor on the Note. BAC, WF, and MERS all demurred together to our complaint on March 22, 2012, and in that demurrer alleged for the first time that the investor on our Note is “Wells Fargo Bank, as trustee on behalf of Structured Adjustable Rate Mortgage Loan Trust Mortgage Pass-Through Certificates, Series 2005-15 (erroneously sued as ‘WELLS FARGO BANK. N.A.’).” After all the different answers we had been provided over the years, we now had another answer. The problem now is that the MERS system did not show Wells Fargo as Trustee as the investor on the Note until September 12, 2012. And BAC is still claiming Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. is the investor. If the investor is Structured Adjustable Rate Mortgage Loan Trust Mortgage Pass-Through Certificates, Series 2005-15, then the MERS system is wrong, because Wells Fargo as Trustee is not the Trust that is the true investor on the Note.

In 2009 Congress passed legislation that included Title 15 United States Code section 1641 (g) requiring that after May 20, 2009 “In addition to other disclosures required by this subchapter, not later than 30 days after the date on which a mortgage loan is sold or otherwise transferred or assigned to a third party, the creditor that is the new owner or assignee of the debt shall notify the borrower in writing of such transfer, including—

(A) the identity, address, telephone number of the new creditor;

(B) the date of transfer;

(C) how to reach an agent or party having authority to act on behalf of the new creditor;

(D) the location of the place where transfer of ownership of the debt is recorded; and

(E) any other relevant information regarding the new creditor.”

We have not received this required disclosure that was generated by the September 2012 transfer of the Note from LBHI to Wells Fargo.

So here we are again, right where we were before. No one knows and no one cares who you owe all that money to.

To finish today, one of the worst examples of what banks can do to a borrower. A Southern California man died in the courtroom while fighting Wells Fargo and now Larry Delassus’ friends and family have sued Wells Fargo for wrongful death. “Wells Fargo placed Delassus into default after the bank incorrectly charged Delassus for back property taxes. Wells Fargo made the mistake after its tax-monitoring subcontractor First American Real Estate Tax Services, otherwise known as CoreLogic, used a wrong assessor’s parcel number to identify Delassus’s home. The parcel number was for the home of Delassus’s neighbor, who had not paid his property taxes. The bank then billed Delassus for more than $13,000 in back taxes after the bank paid the neighbor’s delinquent property taxes.” The full story here.