My name is Jeffrey Hillinger, 

I live in the Antelope Valley in the community of Littlerock California.

I am looking for legal representation, I believe that I may have a case against Bank of America for fraudulent practices regarding to my home loan.

I’ve been in business for myself for over 20 years and the past year and a half I’ve been having problems keeping up with my bills, I’ve been seeking a full time job and unfortunately the good paying jobs that I feel that I am qualified for require a degree which I don’t have because I have worked all of my life.

In the recent months I have fallen behind in my house payment and have been trying my best to straighten everything out with the bank.

The loan servicer once Countrywide is now Bank of America and I believe that they have been very fraudulent in regard to what they tell you and the way that they are processing their loan modifications, not to mention outsourcing to representatives out of the country who you can not understand.

When I first dealt with Countrywide they stated that they were a direct lender only to find out later that they are only a servicer. I found out that Wells Fargo actually owns my house but when I try to find out how to get in direct contact with Wells Fargo the banks won’t give me the information.

In October of 2006 I took out that loan Countrywide, on an optional ARM  when my house appraised it came in at $ 370,000.00, I took out the loan initially at approx $ 244,000.00 which meant that I still had over $ 100,000.00 in equity. In 2007 I took the negative am payment for awhile till I started seeing the house lose its ground. Then I started to pay the full interest payment and would add a little to the principal every now and then to keep the principal from growing.

In early 2008 business started to slow down by the latter part of 2008 my business started to take a nose dive along with the value of my house. By the first part of 2009 I really started having problems making my house payment and have been trying to get some kind of loan modification as to make it easier to make the payments, I now have fallen way behind. Part of this has to do with the fact that when the bank reviews your loan they suspend your house payment.

In October of 2009 I received a letter delivered by Federal Express from Bank of America. The letter was dated October 29, 2009, and offered a principal reduction and loan modification, all I had to do was to accept the banks terms and had up till November 19^th 2009 to accept the terms by sending in a payment.

When I reviewed the letter, the information (figures etc.) within the letter was incorrect according to my records. The principal reduction looked good except they would be changing the 30 year term to a 40 year term at 5.5% interest which meant they were getting their principal reduction back just within the additional 10 year term and then they also required a balloon payment of at the end of $ 112, 521.21 at the time my house was only worth about $ 119,000.00.

I gave them a call and got what information that I could, the representative that I spoke to even agreed that the information was incorrect and told me that all I had to do was to reply by November 19^th and they would send me out all the corrected information in a package. At the time I felt very intimidated because by sending the payment in I would be agreeing to their terms without actually seeing what it was that I was agreeing to. I felt that this was just another scam and predatory act by the bank!

I thought about it and figured that there would be a good chance that I could most likely refinance the house within the 40 year period but I really wanted to see the terms in black and white.

On the morning of November 19^th I called back and talked to another representative, we went over the terms again and she told me that they would extend the agreement with me and all I had to do was to call in a check / debit payment to them by November 30^th and they would send me the package. I figured that would be easy because I also bank with Bank of America.

Below is the copy of the letter I received.

Note: I removed my address and my loan number off of the letter.

A couple of days passed and I received an alert on line by Bank of America telling me that I was approved!

Below is a copy of what it said:

 Note: I removed my address and my loan number off of the letter.

At this point I was pretty confused, and a conflict of what I had been told by the bank representative on the phone on November 19th 2009 as a result I didn’t phone in my payment because I was told in the bank alert that all collections were suspended!

Out of curiosity I called on December 8th 2009 and spoke with a another representative in India believe it or not who told me my workout had been approved and not to send in any money as it would just disrupt the paperwork.  

By this time I was very confused and decided to call back the next day on December 9^th 2009, I had some other questions that I needed to ask about some of the fees that they had listed on my account that I was not aware of. Bank of America had tagged several fees for drive by inspections and appraisals of my house to which they had billed to my mortgage. This time I spoke with a supervisor who assured me that these charges would be dropped. While I had her on the phone I had asked if they could see who was reviewing my loan modification, she told me that a gentleman by the name of William Figueroa had my case and would be contacting me. Once again I had asked about sending in a payment because of the initial requirements stated in the letter of October 29^th 2009, she told me not to send in a payment and told me that Mr. Figueroa would be contacting me by the date stated in the alert that I had received dated 11/19/2009.

January 18^th 2010 had passed and I still had not received any call or paperwork from Mr. William Figueroa. I figured that maybe they had been backed up and so I would give it some more time.

In the mean time I continued checking out the alert on my bank account and it still stated that I had been approved for a loan modification etc.

On February 3^rd 2010 I started to worry so I called Bank of America once again I asked representative who had my loan paperwork, he looked at my file and confirmed that William Figueroa still had the paperwork so I asked if I could speak with him. The representative started poking around to find out how to get in touch with William Figueroa only to find out that William Figueroa was not in the loan modification department and that Bank of America assigned my paperwork to the wrong person. The representative was very apologetic and had admitted that the bank had mad a big mistake and told me that someone will be contacting me within the next week or so once my modification was reassigned. 

After a couple of weeks I hadn’t received a phone call, I called Bank of America on February 27^th 2010 the representative told me that my modification had been reassigned to a Michael Gregory but his department was closed on Saturday and to call back on Monday.    

With this in mind I decided to check my bank alerts on line and there had been an up dated alert on February 24^th 2010 that said I had now been declined and my modification had been canceled!

Below is a copy of what it said:

I called Bank of America on Monday March 3^rd 2010 asking if I could talk to this Michael Gregory and they told me he no longer had my paperwork and collections would resume and I had to start the whole process over again!

To add insult to injury the bank has now hit me with late payment fees of over $ 400.00 a month, jacking up payments!

This whole ordeal has totally stressed me out to the point to where I can barely think!

I would think that when Bank of America says that one is Approved then one should be Approved instead of being lied to!

If anyone has had the same experience please contact me, at the same time if anyone out there has a good lawyer who has the intestinal fortitude to take Bank of America on let me know. They say there is power in numbers and as long as we tell the truth then we should eventually prevail.