Meghan MacKay’s Family Suffered Illegal Foreclosure by Wells Fargo

Dear Kelly,

   My name is Meghan MacKay and I stumbled upon your blog by doing a search of Wells Fargo and how to get a response from someone in the company. I am so disheartened to hear the details of your story, based on the selfish antics of which WFHM and other companies are legally getting away with. It is not right and I am so glad to see that you have managed to take your own horrific experience to educate and help others. That is a courageous thing and you should be commended for your effort. With that, I wanted to tell you a little bit about my situation. My husband and I started looking for a home to buy in February of 2006. At the time, we had two small children, ages 2 and 3 months. We wanted to give our boys stability and a place to grow up. We had the prequal letter while we were looking, which contained his name and mine. Since I had just had our second son in December 2005, I was out of work for about six months. In July 2006, I got a new job at a local hospital, and was told that since it was in the same line of work that I had been doing for the last five years, I would be all set to be on the mortgage. We found our dream home, and signed the purchase and sales agreement in September 2006. That's when everything changed. I was now being told that since I was not at my job long enough that I could not be on the mortgage. My mother ended up going on the loan with my husband in order for us to get the house. Little did we all know how badly we were getting screwed. We had a bottom line payment amount that we knew we could not go over. That was $1800 a month tops. The amount of the payment kept changing the closer we got to the closing date. Two days before we were set to close, we were told that our two payments would total $2500 but that we could refinance out of it in a year. We had to put $15000 into the loan to cover closing costs and we had a one year prepayment penalty. We did not want to lose the house so we decided that we would struggle for a year and then we would get out of it and everything would be okay. Boy, were we ignorant. Within that year, Amerifi, who underwrote the loan, went out of business and since we had been late on two or three payments, and bailed it out of foreclosure once already, no one wanted to refinance us. My husband was involved in a motor vehicle accident in June of 2007 but since we had the house, he was not about to take any time out of work, in order to keep up with the payments. He ended up waking up one day, in August 2007, without the ability to move. He had to stay out of work, at this point. RI has a temporary disability system that is state run and takes forever. He applied for TDI, as we call it, and we waited. Since we were already late on the payment and he was now out of work, we could not pay the mortgage for August or September 2007. In October, we received a foreclosure notice with an auction date of November 5, 2007. My husband, Joe, called Option One to see if he could work out something with them. They wanted $2000 right then and there, and then we were to make forbearance payments for the next six months, in order to get current. These payments were almost $1000 more than what we were paying already and we were told that if we miss even one payment, they would put us right back into foreclosure. In November 2007, Joe was informed that he needed to go and see a doctor that was chosen by TDI. He obliged and thought that everything was fine. Four weeks later, he received a letter from TDI stating that they were no longer going to pay him because their doctor had deemed him fine to go back to work. Their doctor never told him that. Now, panic sets in for us because December 1, 2007 has come and gone and we have a payment that has not been made yet. Joe makes a phone call to a local politician's office and explains to them what has been going on. This was mid December. This politician's office calls TDI and next thing we know, Joe is getting a phone call from the head of TDI and this gentleman could not apologize enough for the mistake. By this time, it's too late. We have another auction date that is set for March 3, 2008. This entire time, I was going to work and my money was being used just to put food on the table and pay the utilities, so we were really dependent on his income to keep us afloat on the mortgage. Even at that, the utilities were becoming too much for just my salary and we hadn't been able to pay anything on the water and sewer taxes. On February 27, 2008, I managed to take all of our savings and tax returns to pay everything up to date, so that our next payment would be in the original amount and due on April 1, 2008. Joe did end up going back to work at the end of December 2007, however, there was a huge cut in hours and overtime at his job that he was not making as much money as we were use to. When April 1st rolled around, we only had about half the amount we needed for the payment. We called up the mortgage company and told them this and their response was that they could not accept a partial payment. We did not understand this, since we were no longer in foreclosure. They told us that if we sent a partial payment, they would send it back to us. We were still trying to catch up on all of our other bills. We had already had the gas and electric shut off. So in May, we had one full payment and half of another. We called the mortgage company again to see if they would work with us. Again, we were told unless we had the full amount, they would not accept it. June was the same story. On June 17, 2008, we received a letter from Option One stating that our mortgage was being sold to American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. as of July 1, 2008. We thought we might have better luck talking to them about this until I did some research and realized it was the same company, just a different name. The end of June brought another foreclosure letter, with an auction date of August 6, 2008. We called and called and pleaded, to no avail. We found out about a non profit organization called NACA (Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America), who specializes in fighting the sub-prime lending predators and negotiating home saves. We went to a workshop on July 26, 2008 and explained what was going on with us. The NACA counselor we met wanted to get right on this to get the auction stopped. He told us to call him on that Monday, since the workshop was on a Saturday. We called that Monday and he explained what paperwork they needed to get this through. We had everything he needed faxed to him by that Friday, August 1, 2008. On Monday, August 4, the negotiator for NACA made the first of three attempts to AHMSI asking them to call off the auction and work out a deal. Joe was home on the day of the scheduled auction. From what he has told me, there was no auction. He said that a man in a maroon car pulled up and stopped to park in front of our neighbors house, across the street. He said that no one ever got out of the car and according to RI Law, the auctioneer has to step on the front lawn of the property, announce that the auction is open with a starting bid at such and such. I understand that it was raining that day but that's no excuse as far as I'm concerned. As far as we know, that man may have had nothing to do with the us or our house. The reason I am writing to you and explaining all of this is because, as we found out later, Wells Fargo was the investor on the house. Since the were the investor, it looked like they bought it back for the fair market value price. They have attempted to evict us three times so far. We hired a lawyer to take our case to superior court and ask to have the foreclosure set aside since it was done illegally. We're still waiting. I went to a NACA Save the Dream Event in Columbia, SC in March. Since the lenders were going to be there in person, I thought I might be able to talk to someone face to face. The gentleman from Wells Fargo that I talked to gave me the number to their REO department. With that, I got nowhere. So I went and talked to a rep from AHMSI and he was supposed to go back to the office and call me by the end of the week with an answer as to whether or not the loan was going to be reinstated. I'm still waiting. I have a man here in RI, who works for the Housing Resource Commission, that is attempting to gain contact with someone in Wells Fargo. I, also, have Kevin Winn, from NACA trying to go the Wells Fargo route too. When I went to the event in March, I was told that Wells is now in contract with NACA, however, they were not back in August 2008. I cannot seem to get a response from anyone on this, however, I did take your advice and send off an email, yesterday, to all that you have listed on your blog. I have lost my job because of all of this. I am now on medication for anxiety and depression. I am heavier now than I have been in my life because of all of this stress. I am 28 years old but I feel much, much older. This has aged me and made me a very unbalanced and unhealthy person. I fell so sorry for anyone who has, is, and might unfortunately go through this. I still look through the local paper here and get completely disappointed at the amount of foreclosures that are still being listed week after week. I thank you so much for your time and your intent to help everyone. I hope to hear from you soon. Take care.

Sincerely,
Meghan A. MacKay



More info fast please -- are you still in your home? yes
Do you want to remain in your home? yes
Loan number last four: 6448 with AHMSI
Your home address, full name please.
Meghan A. MacKay (Power of Attorney)


What state did the foreclosure take place in? RI
Who was your mortgage loan originator?
What year did it originate? 2006
Was your mortgage AND NOTE sold to a different mortgage company? all was transferred with Option One being the servicer and Wells Fargo the investor. Option One now being AHMSI is who stole my house and handed it over to Wells Fargo.