Service Members Due Recompense for Mortgage Scam

Some 952 service members and their co-borrowers are eligible to receive more than $123 million in settlements from some of the nation’s largest mortgage bankers, who illegally foreclosed their mortgages. The banks – JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi Residential Lending, Citibank, CitiMortgage, GMAC Mortgage, Ally Financial, Residential Capital, and BAC Home Loans Servicing (formerly Countrywide Home Loans Servicing) – conducted the non-judicial foreclosures between Jan. 1, 2006, and April 4, 2012. Their actions violated the Service Members Civil Relief Act, which prohibits such foreclosures against eligible service members as long as they originated their mortgages before their period of military service began. “These unlawful judicial foreclosures forced hundreds of service members and their families out of their homes. While this compensation will provide a measure of relief, the fact is that service members should never have to worry about losing their home to an illegal foreclosure while they are serving our country,” said Acting Associate Attorney Gen. Stuart F. Delery.