A former JPMorgan Chase employee is suing the company for wrongful termination but more importantly she has filed a whistleblower complaint with the SEC. The allegations charge JPMorgan with robo-signing, which is the automatic generation of documents such as foreclosure notices without a notary or following the legal process, among other illegal practices.
The former employee, Linda Almonte alleges the following:
1. Chase Bank sold to third party debt buyers hundreds of millions of dollars worth of credit card accounts. . .when in fact Chase Bank executives knew that many of those accounts had incorrect and overstated balances.
3. Chase Bank executives routinely destroyed information and communications from consumers rather than incorporate that information into the consumer’s credit card file, including bankruptcy notices, powers of attorney, notice of cancellation of auto-pay, proof of payments and letters from debt settlement companies.
4. Chase Bank executives mass-executed thousands of affidavits in support of Chase Banks collection efforts and those Chase Bank executives did not have personal knowledge of the facts set forth in the affidavits.
5. When senior Chase Bank executives were made aware of these systemic problems, senior Chase Bank executives — rather than remedy the problems — immediately fired the whistleblower and attempted to cover up these problems.
To support her claims, Almonte says she has “a large volume of documents in her possession available for review by the SEC” and offers her first-hand observations as well.
Almonte’s attorney issued the following statement:
“On numerous occasions, Ms. Almonte witnessed these Affidavit Signers work through at times 3-feet tall stacks of Judgment Affidavits at once during weekly multi-hour long, non-related company meetings. The notaries were not present at these meetings. The Affidavit Signers simply relied on hourly workers to reconcile amounts owed and then treated the actual execution of the affidavits as busy work to be performed while the Affidavit Signers could focus on other matters.”
Debt collection harassment attorney Craig Kimmel and client Patrice Perry appeared on Fox News to discuss a case against Capital One. Capital One harassed Patrice over a credit card debt and sent her a bill for $286 million.
A Delaware County woman claims that a malicious human being – and not a computer program – is behind the erroneous $286,651,237 credit-card bill that Capital One sent her last year, according to a lawsuit filed last week in Philadelphia court.
Now, Patrice Perry, 58, is suing Capital One for that same ridiculous amount for the months of harassment and “terroristic debt-collection methods” that she suffered at their hands, according to the suit.
Her attorney, Craig Kimmel, said that the nine-figure bill that Perry received in August was the final straw.
“It’s not that different from going up to someone’s house, knocking on the door and punching them in the face when they answer,” he said.
Perry’s troubles started in May 2009, when Capital One began trying to collect an alleged credit-card debt from her, according to the suit. The company not only called her at home and at work repeatedly, it also called her family and co-workers, the suit said.
Perry, a hotel clerk from Clifton Heights, received a series of bills, the first of which claimed that she owed $4,807, Kimmel said. The second bill, which came more than two months later, said, without explanation, that she owed about $100 less, according to the suit.
Kimmel said that his client never paid the first bill and was confused when the second one dropped in price. The third bill, received on Aug. 11, 2009, was $13 more than the first bill, again without explanation or a list of how the charges were calculated.
“It’s not your typical scenario, where you’d expect if they were pursing debt with interest it would only go up,” Kimmel said. “It went down and up and down and up. The only thing I can associate with that is that they were trying to confuse my client.”
If Perry was confused after the third bill, she was dumbstruck when the fourth arrived for $286,651,237. Capital One asked that payment be sent in an envelope included with the bill and threatened to pursue legal action if she didn’t pay.
“She was shocked, she had never seen a letter with such a big number on it before,” Kimmel said. “And to demand she put the money in the envelope included and send it back . . . Phew!”
Kimmel said that a bill that large would most likely have been flagged and that human beings, not computers, are behind it.
In a written statement, a Capital One spokeswoman doesn’t deny that claim.
“There are very rare occasions when human error has led to inaccuracies in customer billing letters,” the statement read, in part. “This is clearly one of those instances. . . . We are working to resolve this issue.”
Kimmel said that Capital One sued Perry for a lesser amount, but when no one from the company showed up for a hearing this spring, the case was dropped.
The last communication Perry received from Capital One was last week, when she got a letter that, without mentioning the last bill for more than $286 million, states that she now owes around $6,000, Perry said.
Article by:
STEPHANIE FARR
Philadelphia Daily News
farrs@phillynews.com, 215-854-4225
JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s credit-card contracts will no longer require disputes to be settled through arbitration, a practice that lawmakers said was biased against cardholders, to help settle an antitrust lawsuit.
After a class action suit was filed by Philadelphia based law firm, Berger & Montague PC, the company stopped using arbitrators in July. Lenders including Bank of America, Citigroup Inc., Discover Financial Services and Capital One Financial Corp. secretly met or consulted for the purpose of requiring their cardholders to arbitrate all disputes.
Credit card companies are taking action ahead of the new Credit Card Consumer Protection Bill that will take effect in February of 2010. The bill was passed in May of this year and limits the ability of a credit card company to raise interest rates and late fees. The new law forces credit card companies to simplify their terms so that consumers don’t get hit with the unexpected rate or fee increases.
The banking industry lobbied against the bill, saying it could limit credit at a time when the economy is already struggling with a credit crunch. However, credit card companies make most of their profits off of consumers who go too far into debt or fall behind on their payments. In response, some credit card companies like Bank of America, Chase, Citigroup and American Express began going after consumers with a solid credit history.
Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.
Read the story on CNN about the bill and a couple who had Chase bank raise their interest rates despite having good credit, here.
Many may be familiar with the YouTube video posted by Ann Minch, a California woman that grew enraged after Bank of America raised her credit card’s interest rate to 30% after she had been a loyal customer for years. The Huffington Post recently covered Ann’s storing in their article Debtor’s Revolt: Woman Refuses to Pay Off Bank of America Credit Card. Unfortunately, these situations are all too common. You can see the video here:
It seems so simple. The woman is basically saying I am going to penalize you, Bank of America for raising my interest rate again. But is she really making things more difficult for Bank of America, or for herself in the long term? She knows she is going to get numerous calls from debt collectors, but does she realize there will be a permanent judgment against her if she does not pay the debt? And does she realize that although she does not have a job right now, they could garnish future wages and/or any and all bank accounts she will will have in her possession now and in the future?
Plus, if you are in default with one credit card, expect to see the interest rate rise on the others. They are within their rights to do this. What is starting out as a mild snowball could turn into an avalanche and literally ruin her credit and her finances for many, many years to come.
So what should she do?
1) Write an open letter to her State Representative and cc the executives at Bank of America. Be belligerent and persistent with the State Rep; debt collection practices this is a huge issue currently being discussed in Washington DC.
2) Take a look at the agreement with Bank of America to find out if there is an arbitration provision provided. She may be entitled to a free dispute which will require Bank of America to explain why they raised her interest rate.
3) Once she moved to the new bank with her savings, she should ask the new bank if they are willing to open a credit card for her at a lower interest rate and to transfer the entire balance over. Then, she can close the Bank of America card and avoid debt harassment permanently.
4) Once this pops up on her credit report (and it will) she needs to contact the credit reporting boards at Trans Union, Equifax and Experian regularly and report that the issue is being disputed because Bank of America raised the interest rate without cause. if it is being disputed, it cannot affect her credit.
I recognize that the woman is upset and I am not saying she does not have reason to be, but she is handling this entirely the wrong way. At CreditLaw.com, we’ve helped many consumers protect their rights, stop collection calls and address their debt using fair debt collection practices. While in the short term it may feel better to exercise one’s frustration by starting a “debtor’s revolt,” but sacrificing one’s financial future simply to make a point does not make sense. She needs to strategize and move forward.
Craig Thor Kimmel
www.creditlaw.com
1-800 NOT FAIR
It happened years ago…so far ago that you erased it out of your mind. Your wallet was taken off the movie counter when you were buying popcorn, your number was lifted off of a gas station receipt, or your credit card was taken out of your purse when it was hanging over your chair at the local diner. You didn’t know the credit card was gone immediately; it wasn’t until you saw that $1500 credit card bill for clothing you didn’t purchase that you realized you were robbed.
At that point, you immediately contact the credit card company to report the card stolen. They understand and tell you that you will not be responsible for the charges. Thank goodness, you say with a sigh of relief. Life goes on.
Then, one day out of the blue, you get a call from a collection agency that claims that you not only still owe the original $1500, but also owe thousands of dollars in interest. According to the collection agency, there is no record of the theft and they warn you that if you do not pay back the debt ASAP, your credit will be permanently ruined, and even worse, they will look into legal action to recover the monies. How can this be? What is going on?
The debt lives and even though the company did write it off, a collection agency purchased it and is trying to wring the money out of you with the threat of knocking down the credit rating you have worked so hard to build and achieve. These debts, and all the personal information that accompany the debts, are purchased for anywhere from a fraction of a penny to twelve cents on the dollar. The collection agencies will then do anything they can to get as much of this money, including making empty threats and at times harassing consumers into paying just to be left alone.
So what do you do?
Keep records–if you are the victim of identity or credit card theft and you find that there are charges attributed to your name, you need to keep track of the crime. Police reports, written letters to the credit card company with a certified receipt attached, phone logs of credit card employees…all of these items could be very helpful.
See if you can get a written letter from the creditor releasing you from your debt.
Lastly, keep these records in your file cabinet in case the debt ever comes back to haunt you.
If you find yourself in this type of situation, and you are receiving countless calls from collectors trying to make you pay this debt, fight for your rights and call 1-800 NOT FAIR or drop us a line. We would be glad to discuss the situation with you to see how we can help. Our service is 100% cost-free.
