Consumer complaint received 2021-03-18
Company: SELECT PORTFOLIO SERVICING, INC.
State: SC
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, SC XXXX XX/XX/XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX  XXXX or XXXX XXXX, XXXX ( if confirmed ) Consumer Financial Protection Bureau PO Box XXXX XXXX, IA XXXX Dear XXXX XXXX or XXXX XXXX : I am writing you directly and placing this letter into a formal complaint via your online system, about the actions of a mortgage servicer that seems to be harassing me while providing no proof of their involvement in any sort of transaction related to me. I hope you and your staff can not only help with my personal situation, but use it as an example to curtail the illegal foreclosures that are certain to come about as a result of the pandemics devastation on our workforce and economy. 

In XXXX, I purchased a home financed by XXXX XXXX. Between the closing date in the fall of XXXX and the fall of XXXX, I paid not only my monthly obligation for that financing, but paid many tens of thousands in additional principle, including {$60000.00} I had pulled out of one of my investments, thinking I might need it for closing, but instead put it toward the principal of the loan a few months after closing. As a small business owner, who at the time, was also charged with the full-time care of my aging and invalid mother, I will be the first to admit that once I set up my monthly payments on my online bank and automated that process, I really did not pay close attention to statements coming from XXXX regarding this mortgage. Had I been watching the numbers more closely, I would have learned early on, that my {$60000.00} payment toward principal had not only never posted to my account, but likely other principal payments are missing as well. 

In fact, for roughly 8  years, my payments kept going to the same place each month, and I never received any notices other than my monthly statement, which I rarely even opened. However, at some point in early XXXX, I was contacted and told that my last 2 payments had not been received. I certainly could show proof that they had been sent from my online bank, but learned in that phone conversation that my mortgage had been sold and had clearly been through a few hands by then, all unnoticed to me, even though my mortgage requires notice of such changes. The new servicer was XXXX, and since I had not been notified to send my payments to them, those payments were in limbo with the previous servicer. Once I cleared that up and got them to reverse the late fees that had been applied to my account, I requested a full accounting of my mortgage balance and transactions, from XXXX. 

What I received, was, at best case, incompetent, and at worst case, outright fraud. Their records were so shoddy that several months of my transactions were actually missing, and their data had even the date of our purchasing the property, wrong! But the most glaring omission was the fact that my {$60000.00} payment toward principal made in approximately XXXX or XXXX of XXXX ( after closing in XXXX of that year ), was not recorded AT ALL. When I sought to inquire about this huge error, I was treated rudely, hung up on, etc. and in general, could not beg an answer from anyone as to the ridiculous status of my loan record. 

I wrote letters to the CEO of XXXX and anyone else I could find that might be able to shed light on this situation, all unanswered, until XXXX of XXXX, when my regular payment from my online bank, now being sent to the servicer actually servicing my mortgage, XXXX, was returned to me, unapplied. After 2 months of this happening, I stopped sending payments and made phone calls approximately 4 times a day, 5 days a week to try to get to the bottom of this. I was spending so much time dedicated to this cause, that it impacted my work performance, and my company missed several bid opportunities as a result. 

You can probably predict where this went then -- - by refusing to accept my legitimate payments for 3  months in a row, and refusing to reply to my inquiries as to why this was happening, someone claiming to have something to do with the mortgage, manufactured a foreclosure case against me, which was served on me in XXXX of XXXX. In the time between my initial dispute with XXXX and then, XXXX had been discovered in such egregious accounting errors and fraudulent handling of mortgages, they had gone under and XXXX had purchased their assets, further complicating the matter. But the Plaintiff  on the foreclosure papers listed not XXXX, not XXXX, but another party to which I was not familiar at all : XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. I still do not know their involvement or how they came to be associated with this matter. My requests to depose someone from that institution were denied as well. 

Not having the resources to hire legal assistance after being sued, I proceeded to file an answer with the courts, and asked for discovery of any and all documents showing the involvement of the Plaintiff, how they came to be involved, and the documentation showing a legal chain of title placing them in a position to be able to bring this case. After years of attempting to find any evidence, admissible in a court of law, and seeing the Plaintiff  ( which we eventually, years later, discovered was actually XXXX, and NOT XXXX, although they still, to this day, have never been identified in any court documents ) defy even orders to compel this evidence, and seeing the judge in the case allow them to defy Motions to compel he had granted to me, the judge ruled to move to trial on only the matter of the incorrect accounting, making the erroneous assumption that XXXX had proven they had the legal right to pursue this matter. 

All this occurred even in light of the fact that I had hired a forensic mortgage examiner who proved that the original mortgage had not only been sold as a security ( which I did not authorize and was not noticed about ), but that security had then been split into several tranches, which, by law, renders it an ineffective instrument that can no longer be secured by real property. And to further demonstrate the lack of an existing legal mortgage secured by real estate, the balance shown on the various tranches into which the security was split, was {$0.00}! Clearly, there was no existing mortgage over which to fight. The examiners sworn affidavit is attached to this letter. 

But since the judge, colluding with XXXX, had ignored all these facts, and ruled to award Summary Judgment to the Plaintiff ( still not legally named as XXXX ), we had no choice but to appeal this interlocutory order. After presenting black and white  evidence to all appeals courts in SC, showing we were right and having the Plaintiff provide no disputing evidence, the courts somehow still ruled that the interlocutory order could stand. Having read in other states where courts are starting to wake up to the securities fraud being conducted with mortgages, it appeared that our own local judges had not yet gotten the memo about the egregious and illegal acts being conducted by mortgage servicers and they, too, were willing to turn a blind eye  to the fraud being perpetrated upon me and countless others. 

The last appeals court ruling was several years ago, and recenty, I have begun receiving monthly statements from Select Portfolio Services ( SPS ), which seem to claim that they now think they have something to do with this matter. The numbers on their statements are, of course, erroneous, dating back to the errors discovered in XXXX, and do not reflect the {$0.00} balance reflected by the securities documents, but they now seem to think they are in a position of authority and may attempt to file another lawsuit over it. I believe they will not be able to pick up where the old, abandoned lawsuit left off, but I do not put it past them to try. 

As soon as I received their first correspondence, I sent them a Qualified Written Request, asking them to provide any evidence that they have involvement with any mortgage or matter related to me, the legal chain of title indicating how they wound up in any position of authority they appear to be claiming, and they have, just as their predecessor had done for over five years, ignored my requests ( I have now given them three opportunities to provide a reasonable response ) and simply submitted the same documents theyve been sending in the way of some account statement that had already been sent many times, that does not even appear to be related to my situation. 

In any event, anything they attempt to do at this point would be untimely, and their continued correspondence serves no purpose but to harass me, as I attempt to ready my home for eventual sale in the next few years or so. I again feel as if, as I did for so many years, that the Sword of Damocles is hanging over me, causing me great XXXX XXXX to the point it is impacting my family, my work and my ability to earn a living from my already stressed company suffering from the downturn caused by the pandemic. 

So, I am asking the CFPB to step in and prevent SPS from taking any action and continuing to harass me unless and until they can provide evidence, admissible in court, of their involvement in this matter and why they appear to be attempting to collect a debt related to a mortgage that the securitization documents show to not exist. If, at any time in the future, firm proof that something is owed to a party relative to this securitized, bifurcated, and now non-existent mortgage, I will resolve that debt from the proceeds of selling my home when I am in a position to do so. Until that time, I request that the CFPB order SPS to remove any and all negative information from my credit reports, and remove any relationship to them or any entity they claim to represent, from my insurance documents and anything else where the name SPS, XXXX, or XXXX might appear. To my knowledge, I have no business with or relationship with either of these entities. 

Thank you for your assistance in this matter. 

Sincerely, XXXX XXXX XXXX Attachment : Affidavit of XXXX XXXX

Company public response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation