Kathleen Willey, the former White House volunteer who accused President Clinton in 1998 of sexually harassing her in 1993, is trying to expose potential robo-signing foreclosure fraud from her home state of Virginia–and she’s already gone on national television to get the word out to her fellow Americans.
Foreclosure proceedings were commenced against Willey in 2010, but Willey was able to stop the expedited 14-day foreclosure process by filing a fraud suit against her lender, One West Bank. In an exclusive telephone interview with Big Government from her Richmond based home, Willey told me the following:
I applied for a modification back in 2009. My bank was IndyMac, which was the very first bank the feds seized in 2008. Then they turned it around and sold it to George Soros and Larry Dell for a song. So, the two of them–big Obama contributors–they bought that bank.
That got a lot of play in California. There were lots and lots of stories, but it just kind of died. Out of sheer desperation I finally said look, I’ve had it, I need to know something about what’s happening to my home, and I was reading all the horror stories of what they were doing to people and so I told them if you don’t do something to help me and all these other people I’m going to go on television and they laughed at me.
I went on Fox & Friends on October 21, 2010 and someone from One West Bank called into the show and suspended the foreclosure. All of a sudden they were my new best friend. I had my very own modification officer at the bank, but then it just started dragging on again. Finally, I called last February. They were supposed to give me a decision within 30 days to tell me whether or not I even qualify, but they didn’t.
Finally, I called again and I got someone on the phone who said it was looking good and that I shouldn’t have any problem and then I called again and then they turned me down. Then they turned around and they sent me a 2-page self-explanatory letter signed by a person telling me the reasons I’d been turned down, a number of reasons I could have shot bullets through. So, I waited, waited and waited and then it got to December 29 when I got my first letter of fair debt collection, that they were moving in and they put it on fast track and now my home is scheduled to be sold next Thursday, February 2nd.
But there’s more–Willey may have stumbled upon a new form of “robo-signing,” the illegal practice of bank employees signing thousands of documents and affidavits without verifying the information. Right now, the U.S. is in talks with five major banks including Ally Financial Inc., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., and Wells Fargo & Co. about a $19 billion settlement for their participation in robo-signing fraud.
Virginia is a “non-judicial” foreclosure state, which means that the lender does not have to file a lawsuit to start foreclosure proceedings. Instead, the lender sends the borrower a “notice of default” and can then initiate a sale. In Virginia, a homeowner will receive notice and then have only 14-days to vacate their home unless they take legal action to halt the process.
In Willey’s case, she was scheduled for foreclosure in the fall of 2010, but shortly after her Fox & Friends appearance she received a required “substitution of trustee” notice from a lender’s representative telling her they were now handling her account.
Willey immediately noticed something suspicious, on the second page of her notice: a Xerox image of a staple in the upper left hand corner, but no staple image on the first page. That made Willey suspicious that the signature page had been attached to another document prior to her own and that the signature and notarization, which should have been exclusive to her own foreclosure notification was used before and was possibly being recycled, a.k.a. robo-signing.
“It was just another example of all the tricks they pull,” Willey said of the mortgage industry. “I’m not saying they don’t have a valid point. I have to make my payments, but they’re supposed to do everything right by law, and they didn’t.”
As a result of Willey’s lawsuit, her bank cancelled the original October 21, 2010 foreclosure that included the allegedly defective substitution of trustee notice. For the moment, Willey was victorious.
Subsequently, in February 2011, the lender executed a new appointment document, which mooted the original point of whether the first document was valid.
This time, the substitution of trustee notice did not appear to be invalid.
Willey’s house is scheduled to be sold on her local courthouse steps on February 2nd and she is currently exploring alternative ways to halt the sale. Still, she feels determined to keep speaking out about corrupt foreclosure practices taking place within the banking industry.
“I have every single thing documented,” she said. “They just try to wear you down and wear you out. A lot of people in this country have been hurt by what they do.”