While Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf and his fellow banksters met in Salt Lake City, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) members mourned the damage they bank has caused the Bay Area with a protest at their Headquarters.

On Tuesday, April 23rd homeowners, tenants, faith leaders, and students from around the Bay Area demonstrated at Wells Fargo headquarters in solidarity with those at annual shareholder meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. The memorial service in San Francisco focused on three themes: mourning lost homes, dreams, and lives as a result Well Fargo's predatory lending practices; standing in fellowship with protestors at the shareholder's meeting; calling for action and justice for homeowners, students, and all currently in the struggle against crushing debt.

While protesters gathered outside the San Francisco headquarters of Wells Fargo, other Californians went to Salt Lake City to protest at the company’s annual shareholders meeting.

Via:

“We recognize that there are a lot of predatory loan practices and racial loan practices,” said ACCE spokesman Melvin Willis. “They are making record profits while people are just struggling to have the 'American dream' — to live in a house and raise a family.”

He said foreclosures are still harming families, particularly in minority communities nationwide.

“That is unacceptable and that is why we are here today,” Willis said.

Thursday's event was part of a broader campaign of ACCE and the Home Defenders League to push Wells Fargo to change their practices in order to reduce foreclosures. The groups are calling on Wells Fargo to:

• Make principal reduction a core front-end strategy when considering loan modifications;
• Release data on race & income of the homeowners they foreclose on, evict or assist.
• Stop all foreclosures and evictions stop until these steps are put into place.

Protesters also called on Wells Fargo to end practices that profit from community losses, including foreclosure, payday-type lending and investment in private prisons.

A bank foreclosure and eviction goes horribly wrong when the former homeowner took four firefighters hostage in a suburban Atlanta, Georgia neighborhood on Wednesday.

The gunman who took four Georgia firefighters hostage Wednesday has been shot and killed, reportedly by SWAT-team members. One police officer was wounded, and all four firefighters have been taken to the hospital for minor injuries. The hostage scene erupted Wednesday afternoon after firefighters responded to a 911 call from a man saying he was having a heart attack at a home near Atlanta, police said. The gunman reportedly was holding the firefighters hostage over demands his utilities and cable be turned back on.

Initially five firefighters were held, but the gunman released one in order to move the fire truck.

NBC Atlanta 11 Alive:

According to authorities, police used a "flash bang grenade" to distract the suspect when they felt their officers were in "immediate danger" on the scene.

All four of the firefighters taken hostage are safe and sustained superficial wounds during their recovery effort and one Gwinnett County officer was injured. According to authorities, the officers injuries are non-life threatening.

A sheriff's deputy said the gunman is upset that the house is in foreclosure, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

According to property tax records, the home where the firefighters were being held was foreclosed on in November 2012 by Wells Fargo, and the mortgage then sold to Fannie Mae.

Gwinnett County Police Cpl. Edwin Ritter said the unidentified gunman was facing eviction and wanted the power turned back on.

The identity of the deceased has not yet been released pending notification of next of kin.

On Thursday, dozens of homeowners and supporters joined Betty Badro in confronting Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf at a banker's conference on the day before her home of 19 years is scheduled to be foreclosed. Ms. Badro, who has worked for the State of California for 22 years, attempted to deliver a personal check to Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf while he was giving a keynote address at the American Banker Retail Lending Conference at a luxury beach resort hotel in Carlsbad, California.

Betty has spent months attempting to get Wells Fargo to consider her for a loan modification. Betty lives with her disabled brother and one of her two children, and suffered recent financial setbacks due to state furloughs and personal health issues. Her finances have now recovered, a HUD-certified housing counselor has reviewed her case, and believes that Ms. Badro qualifies for a loan modification.

Ms. Badro took the stage, shook hands with Mr. Stumpf, and proceeded to explain that his bank was poised to take her home the next day. She told Mr. Stumpf that she can afford the mortgage and had a check in hand that she was asking him to accept. Not saying another word, Mr. Stumpf turned his back on Ms. Badro and left the stage. As presumably other bankers attending the conference attempted to restrain Badro while calling for "security," she bravely stands her ground and insists on telling the crowd her story.

Then the entire group of fifty homeowners took over the stage and made a presentation outlining how Wells Fargo has failed the community and the changes that Wells Fargo should make in their foreclosure practices.

"I've been working hard all my life," says Betty Bardo, member of ACCE. "I have income, I want to pay my mortgage, I just want a modification with principal reduction so that I can stay in my home. It is everything to me. John Stumpf and Wells Fargo are raking in money - they just had their most profitable year ever - but they're profiting off the homes and livelihoods of American families."

The event was organized by the ACCE Home Defenders League; and included the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), the Home Defenders League, and Occupy Fights Foreclosures.

UPDATE: Betty Badro's foreclosure was notified after the action that today that her foreclosure has been postponed indefinitely.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputies perform CPR on Larry Delassus Dec. 19 outside the Department A courtroom where he went into cardiac arrest. Photo by Trujillo law partner, Bob Khakshooy

A bank foreclosure can be a horrifically stressful event on a young and healthy person. But imagine coping with a bank trying to take away your home because of a typo on their part, and not any fault of your own, when you are a frail, disabled veteran. That's the battle 62-year-old Larry Delassus had to fight even though court records show he paid his mortgage two months ahead of schedule and also paid his property taxes in advance.

Via:

On the morning of Dec. 19, 2012, in a Torrance courtroom, Larry Delassus' heart stopped as he watched his attorney argue his negligence and discrimination case against banking behemoth Wells Fargo.

His death came more than two years after Wells Fargo mistakenly mixed up his Hermosa Beach address with that of a neighbor in the same condo complex. The bank's typo led Wells Fargo to demand that Delassus pay $13,361.90 ­— two years of late property taxes the bank said it had paid on his behalf in order to keep his Wells Fargo mortgage afloat.

But Delassus, a quiet man who suffered from the rare blood-clot disorder Budd-Chiari syndrome and was often hospitalized, didn't owe a penny in taxes.

One of his neighbors, whose condo "parcel number" was two digits different from Delassus', owed the back taxes.

In a series of painfully tragic events, Wells Fargo relied on its typographical error to double Delassus' mortgage — from $1,237.69 to $2,429.13 — as its way of recouping the $13,361.90 in taxes Delassus didn't owe. Delassus, a retiree living on a $1,655 check, couldn't meet the mysteriously increased mortgage. He stopped paying, and soon was far behind on his mortgage.

One especially difficult moment during his battle with Wells Fargo came in May 2011, shortly after another bad bout of illness, Delassus' condo was sold by the bank. In a videotaped court deposition later, Delassus breaks down crying. "I came back from the hospital, and that very day, they sold the son of a b*tch," he says. "I'm homeless. I did not have a home. My condo — 16 years, gone. Gone."

There's much more on Larry Delassus' battle with Wells Fargo here.

Once Wells Fargo had acknowledged their typographical error, there doesn't seem to be any logical reason that they didn't bend over backwards to return Mr. Delassus to square one with his mortgage...the 16-year mortgage holder who never missed a payment, and return him to that point with all the erroneously tacked on fees wiped away.

Delassus' attorney Anthony Trujillo, a friend and next-door neighbor, recalls deposing Wells Fargo Litigation Support Manager Michael Dolan in 2012, and asked what his definition of “fair” was.

“Fair is a place where they have ponies and merry-go-rounds,” Dolan said.

Short sales end with the homeowner out of the home. This is the most common "penalty" on banks in the mortgage settlement.

Bloomberg News:

While the banks are stepping up efforts to help borrowers stay in their homes, they are still spending most of the settlement on short sales and forgiveness of home-equity loans that allow them to take bad loans off their books. Profits from new lending are increasing even as regulators enforce penalties for modification missteps and foreclosures pursued with fraudulent or missing documents. Last year, mortgage revenue at the four largest lenders -- Bank of America, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), and U.S. Bancorp --surpassed the amount they spent on consumer settlements and investor demands they buy back faulty loans.

“The banks have shown a knack for sidestepping government attempts to have them redress their role in the foreclosure crisis and keep people in their homes,” said Arthur Wilmarth, a law professor at George Washington University in the nation’s capital. “A lot of these efforts end up helping the banks, not the homeowners.”

Lets recap: The Big Banks pay a small (Small in Banker dollars, anyways) "penalty" *cough* to the DOJ for fraudulent foreclosure practices, and agree to review their own foreclosures and decide which homeowners will receive aid from the "penalty" funds paid to the DOJ that are allotted to homeowner aid. Then typically, the Banks are going to punish the homeowner with a short sale of their home that A) Results in the homeowner losing their home, and destroys their credit. B)Helps the Bank complete their obligation to the DOJ. and C)Allows the Bank further forgiveness by erasing home equity loans from their books.

The Big Banks have struck a Trifecta with Eric Holder's Department of in-Justice. For troubled homeowners, there is homelessness and despair, and just a small glimmer of hope.

Steve: “It’s fraud. It’s clearly fraud. If I did that to anyone else, I’d be in jail.”

From "100 Stories of What Wall Street Broke," here is Steve's story:

When the economy crashed and his business slowed down, Wells Fargo offered to modify Steve’s loan to lower his payments. After making a series of trial payments, Wells Fargo notified Steve that his modification was on the way.

A few days later he received a letter stating that his modification had been denied. The Wells Fargo representative he spoke with reassured him that they had made a mistake and that he should keep making the payments, which he did for seven months.

Steve then started to receive foreclosure notices. Again, the bank representative assured him that the notices had been sent in error.

Then Steve checked his credit. Wells Fargo had reported him delinquent on his mortgage for the last six months. The reduced payments that Steve had agreed to pay for the previous months had been put into a separate trust by Wells Fargo, and they had not gone towards his mortgage.

Steve took the case to court but lost despite mountains of evidence in his favor. He lost his home and his business.

Steve is fighting back with the help of the Colorado Progressive Coalition.

"100 Stories of What Wall Street Broke" is a project created by the Home Defender's League, which is collecting first-person accounts from homeowners around the country. Homeowners can submit their own stories here.

The Home Defenders League is a national movement of underwater homeowners and their allies "Fighting Wall Street to get back what Wall Street stole from us and for a stronger economy for all of us."

This video is from a Nov. 9th, 2012 march by hundreds of supporters on several banks in Los Angeles (including Deutsche Bank, as well as Wells Fargo, BNY Mellon, and Bank of America) to protest illegal foreclosures, the banks' greed, and a corrupt system built to enrich the wealth of a few at the expense of the 99%. The video features interviews and speeches from Occupy activists from southern California, and members of other groups including Occupy The Hood, the American Indian Movement, and LA residents facing foreclosure and homelessness.

This may well be a new low for a bank. On the morning of October 10, 2012, Niko Black was in bed when her front door was kicked open by the Orange County Sheriff's Department. Black, who has terminal cancer, crawled to her wheelchair as four-to-six deputies entered and proceeded to hold a gun to her face. She was then taken outside without any of her medication. When she called the Garden Grove Police, they did nothing. Since all of her medication and other means of treatment were in her home, Black began to have difficulty breathing, and very quickly and had to be taken to the hospital.

Via:

The 37-year-old Mescalero Apache woman, who suffers from a rare, malignant and metastatic form of cancer, refused to open the door, saying that they had no legal right to be there. On the other side was a taped copy of a court order obtained from Federal Bankruptcy Judge Theodore C. Albert in late August that she firmly believes should have prevented the OCSD from carrying out the eviction. The deputies acted anyway.

"They break down my door," Black recounts. "I'm sitting there in my wheel chair. I'm about 100 pounds of shriveled-up cancer and a threat to no one."

What came next, she says, was much more harrowing. "Sergeant Bob Sima puts a gun to my face, finger on the trigger, no safety and walks around me," Black states, pausing to emotionally gather herself. "There's no reason, except for to threaten my life, for an intimidation factor, to put a gun to my head."

With neighbors lining up outside watching, Black's health began to worsen. "I needed my medication, I couldn't breathe and I was having a seizure," she said, claiming that deputies were unresponsive to concerns about her condition; one officer even remarked that she 'looked good' to him. An ambulance finally arrived at her friend's behest and she was forcibly removed from her home and hospitalized.

If this situation weren't complicated enough, according to an online petition circulating in support of Black, she never even had a mortgage with Wells Fargo!

Since the eviction, Federal Judge Theodore C. Albert (who signed the court order favoring Black) has ordered Wells Fargo and county representatives to appear in court on November 13 to explain the eviction.

Two of the U.S. largest banks, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, reported big quarterly profits on Friday—with JPMorgan Chase having a third-quarter profit of $5.7 billion, up 34 percent from last year. The economy is adding jobs, the housing market is recovering, and the federal reserve provides money for free. Which means it is a great time to be a bank. Earnings at Wells Fargo were up 22 percent for the third quarter, or $4.9 billion profit. Chase’s profits come in the aftermath of the “London whale” trading debacle.

Wells Fargo is the latest collateral damage from the housing boom. U.S. prosecutors are suing the bank -- the country’s largest originator of home loans -- for defrauding the government, accusing it of issuing mortgages without proper discern and then lying about their condition to the Federal Housing Administration. When these problematic loans later defaulted, the Federal Housing Administration was obligated to cover the hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. The lawsuit attempts to reclaim those damages. “The bank will present facts to vigorously defend itself against this action,” a Wells Fargo rep said in a statement.

NYT:

In a lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the prosecutors accused Wells Fargo, the country’s largest originator of home loans, of defrauding the government for more than a decade. The bank recklessly issued mortgages and then made false certifications about their condition to the Federal Housing Administration, a government agency that insured them, the complaint said.

The problematic loans were not eligible for the government insurance, according to the lawsuit, and when they soured, the F.H.A. was obligated to cover the losses. The Justice Department is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

“Yet another major bank has engaged in a longstanding and reckless trifecta of deficient training, deficient underwriting and deficient disclosure, all while relying on the convenient backstop of government insurance,” Preet S. Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, whose office filed the lawsuit, said in a statement.

According the the government's complaint, Wells Fargo knew about the vast number of deficient loans but concealed them from the F.H.A.