DECEMBER 4, 2010
By ROBBIE WHELAN
OKEECHOBEE COUNTY, Fla.—Patsy Campbell could tell you a thing or two about fighting foreclosure. She’s been fighting hers for 25 years.
The 71-year-old retired insurance saleswoman has been living in her house, a two-story on a half acre in a tidy middle-class neighborhood here in central Florida, since 1978. The last time she made a mortgage payment was October 1985.
And yet Ms. Campbell has been able to keep her house, protected by a 105-pound pit bull named Dodger and a locked, rusty gate advising visitors to beware of the dog.
“They’re not going to take this house,” says Ms. Campbell. “I intend to stay in this house and maintain it as my residence until I die.”
Ms. Campbell’s foreclosure case has outlasted two marriages, three recessions and four presidents. She has seen seven great-grandchildren born, plum real-estate markets come and go and the ownership of her mortgage change six times. Many Florida real-estate lawyers say it is the longest-lasting foreclosure case they have ever heard of.
The story of how Ms. Campbell has managed to avoid both paying her mortgage and losing her home, which is currently assessed at more than $203,000, is a cautionary tale for lenders that cut corners and followed sloppy practices when originating, processing and servicing mortgages. Lenders are especially vulnerable in the 23 states, including Florida, that require foreclosures to be approved by a judge.
Ms. Campbell has challenged her foreclosure on the grounds that her mortgage was improperly transferred between banks and federal agencies, that lawyers for the bank had waited too long to prosecute the case, that a Florida law shields her from all her creditors, and for dozens of other reasons. Once, she questioned whether there really was a debt at all, saying the lender improperly separated the note from the mortgage contract.
She has managed to stave off the banks partly because several courts have recognized that some of her legal arguments have some merit—however minor. Two foreclosure actions against her, for example, were thrown out because her lender sat on its hands too long after filing a case and lost its window to foreclose.
Ms. Campbell, who is handling her case these days without a lawyer, has learned how to work the ropes of the legal system so well that she has met every attempt by a lender to repossess her home with multiple appeals and counteractions, burying the plaintiffs facing her under piles of paperwork.
Um, just how old is that dog these days? Would like to know why she thinks she is the “good guy” in the story, and, just why does the reporter paint her as the “good guy”?
She is the good guy because she was a victim of fraud, DON’T YOU GET IT!!!!! GEEZ…The nerve of some people believing committing fraud is ok.
Banks aren’t capable of making ANY LOAN FOR CONSIDERATION. One of the tenets of contract is consideration, no consideration no risk, no risk no court standing. If you sign a promissory note for the purchase of the home you are signing the check AS THE MAKER to buy the home. This money or bank credit is the same as the credit you receive when you depose yourself of a check or cash IN MAKING A DEPOSE-IT at the bank.
You receive a DEPOSE-IT slip and in return receive credit. When you sign the promissory note your are signing as an authorized rep for the bank, when you sign a personal check again your signing as an authorized rep for the bank (read the fine print). All the proceeds for the home, your personal check come from YOUR PASS THROUGH ACCOUNT. YOUR ACCOUNT NOT THE BANKS ACCOUNT.
The same is true of overdrafts, they don’t exist. Everything you write and give a signature to (the real value) is transacted through the pass through account (remember the passbook you received when you opened the checking account ?) You cannot overdraft a pass through account because treasury accounting doesn’t deal in money of exchange it deals with money of account, all digits in a database as there is no real money to begin with. If you wrote a check and it bounced then the bank should show it in it’s end of day accounting
but it will not it will be balanced as such the bank actually owes you the money for the check. Your playing one game (the wrong game)
and the bank is playing the other, and their stealing you blind for your ignorance.
On the mortgage issue, an example would be your coming to me and asking for a loan of $10,000. I say “OK I’ll lend you $10,000 but you need collateral” You say “I’ve got a diamond ring worth $10,000
and you can hold that” Well you give me the ring and I sell it, take the $10,000, put it into my checking account, write you a check for
$10,000 along with a contract for you to sign stating your repaying me at 6% on the principle, making monthly payments for the next 10 years. Sound good, if you said yes then your a typical person in a mortgage. WELL IT’S NOT GOOD, IT’S NEVER BEEN GOOD UNLESS YOU ENJOY BEING RIPPED OFF. If your having mortgage/loan/credit card trouble write riceowlex@gmail.com