Consumer complaint received 2015-06-29
Product: Mortgage — Conventional adjustable mortgage (ARM)
Issue: Loan servicing, payments, escrow account — 
Company: Onity Group Inc. (DC)

Ocwen, servicer of my home mortgage and has been defrauding me since they bought the loan. They have been taking my payments for a given month and failing to reflect to receipt of the payment on my mortgage account, instead inserting account information to indicate that no payment was made when the payment was in fact made by me. Also, they have been sending me XXXX-XXXX certified letters regarding my home mortgage and charging me almost {$10.00} per each letter and subtracting these charges from my monthly mortgage payments notwithstanding that many of the letters are duplicates. Ocwen has also been defrauding me by charging me late payment charges between {$150.00} and XXXX pet month and tacking this sum onto my principle balance. Included in these so called late payments are the accumulated certified letter charges, which I never agreed to pay and which are not mentioned in the mortgage note. In addition, Ocwen forcefully imposed escrow on the mortgage accounts despite the fact that I did not agree to the escrow when the mortgage note was signed nor when the note was modified. Prior to Ocwen 's wrongful imposition of the escrow in order to increase my mortgage payment by {$900.00} per month, I was responsible for paying the property taxes and property insurance on the property and did so in a timely fashion. After Ocwen imposed the escrow, I was forced to pay a higher monthly payment for the property insurance than what I had been paying and the coverage Ocwen secured was insufficient and substantially lower than my coverage. I contacted Ocwen by phone about the escrow and requested it to be removed because I had already paid the property taxes and never agreed to an escrow account. They stated once I provided proof to them that the property insurance was paid and property tax was paid, they would remove the escrow. I faxed documents Ocwen requested in order to remove escrow. Ocwen received the documents I submitted but refused to remove the escrow account. I contatedd Ocwen again after faxing the documents in to them and requested escrow to be removed. This time ocwen informed me that they would not accept my request by phone and stated that I had to request this in writing. I followed up with a written request to remove the escrow but Ocwen ignored my written request. This escrow dispute lasted about 3 months during which Ocwen forced me to pay an additional {$900.00} per month in escrow fees and refused to accept my mortgage payment without the additional {$900.00} per month. Additionally, Ocwen has mismanaged distribution of my escrow payments ever since they created the escrow account by not paying the total property tax bill by the due date to the tax authority which in turn has caused me to have to pay additional late fees ( through my monthly payments to Ocwen ) to the tax authority due to Ocwen 's failure to disburse my escrow payments in order to satisfy the property tax bill in full, by due date. This occurred completely as a result of Ocwen 's mismanagement of the escrow funds ( that I paid in their entirety ) on multiple occasions now. Ocwen is completely misappropriating and mismanaging and failing to properly apply my mortgage payments. Specifically, Ocwen is applying more of the payment into the interest and other fees than what should be applied according to the mortgage note and interest rate. In order to do this, Ocwen is failing to apply sufficient portions of my monthly payments to the principle balance of the mortgage. In summary. Ocwen is defrauding me, the mortgage holder, and committing gross mismanagement of my mortgage payments. Ocwen has violated the mortgage contract terms through gross mismanagement of my payments. Ocwen has grossly failed to observe terms of mortgage note thus causing me to suffer detriment and financial loss. I have sustained accumulated financial losses and equity losses as a direct result of Ocwen 's actions.