Consumer complaint received 2017-02-24
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: DE
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: FHA mortgage
Issue: Settlement process and costs

Complaint:
Illegal Property Flipping victim 1. XXXX my best friend introduced me to his cousin about a proposition to flip a property, fix it up nicely and turn it into a profitable apartment complex property, she explained that she and her then husband would take care of the paperwork and mortgage payments and that I would be able to sit back and learn how to flip homes for profit. 
2. She asked if my credit was good and it was, my best friend did not have good credit and so he could not go in on the venture. 
3. She took me to countrywide home loans to fill out documentation. 
a. She called me and said that I did not have enough credit but not to worry and she would take care of it for me which I told her thank you for all of her help 4. I got approved she assisted me in signing paperwork, and she told me to meet her in XXXX DE to talk to a laywer to sign all papers regarding the closing for the property. Another younger gentleman was at this meeting ( who I found out owned this property before I did, and later I realized that all this money would be going to him ) Also her father was also there. 
5. Once that meeting was over, I saw her just a handful of times, I kept asking when was this venture truly going to get started and she would constantly make up stories saying the town of XXXX was messing with her, discriminating her, that her aunts or uncle or grandmother was sick or XXXX or whatever the case 6. She and her husband at the time eventually met me one evening and gave me XXXX bucks and said thank you for your patience. 
7. Months went by, mail starting to come in saying payments were not being paid. Letters from the town of XXXX Delaware about grass were coming to me and taxes and fines. 
8. This went on for months until I finally lost all contact with her and I realized finally, that this was a scam, that all the money that was given to the seller was most likely split with her and father, I tried my very best to get out of the mortgage but being XXXX and then XXXX I knew nothing or where to turn. 
9. I finally bit the bullet and realized that I would just have to have the property go into foreclosure. 
10. Doing so I gave one last ditch effort to try and get this property out of my name right before XXXX. I found out that the builder of the property was not even supposed to build, that the property was to close to the street, that numerous violations were committed, that the entire property did not have a water line running to it, and that the street would have to be torn up to and reconstructed just to get a water line to it. I also found out that country wide sold me a residential property that was supposed to be a business property for a doctor 's office. 
11. In XXXX I moved my now wife down from XXXX and we wanted to get our first Apt together. My credit was still in rough shape because of the house, enough years had not gone by yet, so the Apt went into my then girlfriend 's name. 
12. Flash forward to now, I 've cleaned my credit scores up, married, child on the way and we decided to build a home. The person trying to help us at XXXX saw the progress in my credit history, but noticed ( and knew ) about my foreclosure. 
13. I printed documentation showing that my name was off of the Deed in XXXX and that enough time should have gone passed. His supervisor said no, that in XXXX someone tried to do a short sale on the home and it reactivated my account and that a new waiting period had begun. 
14. The property has now become a foreclosure. 
15. I have recently found documentation where I actually had someone interested in buying the property years ago but Countrywide/BofA denied the sale. 
16. Word of mouth is that she owned the property the entire time and what transpired was I actually purchased the home the person scammed me in the first place.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation