Even as Wells Fargo was reeling from a scandal in its consumer banking unit last year, officials in the company's mortgage business were putting through unauthorized changes to home loans held by customers in bankruptcy, new lawsuits contend.
The changes, which surprised the customers, typically lowered their monthly loan payments, which would seem to benefit borrowers, particularly those in bankruptcy. But deep in the details was this fact: Wells Fargo's changes would extend the terms of borrowers' loans by decades, meaning they would have monthly payments for far longer and would ultimately owe the bank much more.
Any change to a payment plan for a person in bankruptcy is subject to approval by the court and the other parties involved. But Wells Fargo put through big changes to the home loans without such approval, according to the lawsuits.
The changes are part of a loan-modification process being tested by Wells Fargo. But they put borrowers in bankruptcy at risk of defaulting on the commitments they have made to the courts, and could make them vulnerable to foreclosure in the future.
A spokesman for Wells Fargo, Tom Goyda, said the bank denies the claims made in the lawsuits and particularly disputes how the complaints characterize the bank's actions. Wells Fargo contends that the borrowers agreed to the changes and that the bankruptcy courts were notified.
"Modifications help customers stay in their homes when they encounter financial challenges," Goyda said, "and we have used them to help more than 1 million families since the beginning of 2009."
According to court documents, Wells Fargo has been putting through unrequested changes to borrowers' loans since 2015. During this period, the bank was under scrutiny for its employees' practice of opening unwanted bank and credit card accounts for customers to meet sales quotas.
That practice -- which the bank admitted in September 2016 when it was fined $185 million -- cost CEO John Stump his job and damaged the bank's reputation.
It is unclear how many unsolicited loan changes Wells Fargo has put through nationwide, but seven cases describing the conduct have recently arisen in Louisiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas. In the North Carolina court, Wells Fargo produced records showing it had submitted changes on at least 25 borrowers' loans since 2015.
The lawsuits contend that Wells Fargo puts through changes on borrowers' loans using a routine form that typically records new real estate taxes or homeowners' insurance costs that are folded into monthly mortgage payments. Upon receiving these forms, bankruptcy-court workers usually put the changes into effect without questioning them.
It is unclear why the bank would put through such changes. On one hand, Wells Fargo stood to profit from the new loan terms it set forth, and, under programs designed to encourage loan modifications for troubled borrowers, the bank receives as much as $1,600 from government programs for every such loan it adjusts, the class-action lawsuit said. But submitting the changes without approval violates bankruptcy rules and puts the bank at risk of court sanctions and federal scrutiny. When a lawyer for a borrower has questioned the changes, Wells Fargo has reversed them.
Abelardo Limon Jr., a lawyer in Brownsville, Texas, who represents some of the plaintiffs, said he first thought Wells Fargo had made a clerical error. Then he saw another case.
"When I realized it was a pattern of filing false documents with the federal court, that was appalling to me," Limon said in an interview. The unauthorized loan modifications "really cause havoc to a debtor's reorganization," he said.
This is not the first time Wells Fargo has been accused of wrongdoing related to payment change notices that it filed with the bankruptcy courts. Under a settlement with the Justice Department in November 2015, the bank agreed to pay $81.6 million to borrowers in bankruptcy whom it had failed to notify on time when their monthly payments shifted to reflect different real estate taxes or insurance costs.
That settlement -- in which the bank also agreed to change its internal procedures to prevent future violations -- affected 68,000 homeowners.
Borrowers having financial difficulties often file for personal bankruptcy to save their homes, working out payment plans with creditors and the courts to bring their loans current in a set period. If the borrowers meet their obligations over that time, they emerge from bankruptcy with clean slates and their homes intact.
Changing these payment plans without the approval of the judge and other parties can imperil borrowers' standing with the bankruptcy courts.
In the lawsuit filed last week, the lead plaintiffs are a couple in North Carolina who say that Wells Fargo submitted three changes to their payment plan in 2016 without approval. The first time, Wells Fargo put through the changes without alerting them, according to the couple, Christopher Dee Cotton and Allison Hedrick Cotton.
The Cottons' monthly payments fell with every change, dropping to $1,251 from $1,404.
Buried deep in the documents Wells Fargo filed -- but did not get approved by the borrowers, their lawyers or the court -- was the news that the bank would extend the Cottons' loan to 40 years, increasing the amount of interest they would have to pay. Before the changes, the Cottons owed roughly $145,000 on their mortgage and were on schedule to pay off the loan in 14 years. Over that period, their interest would total $55,593.
Under the new loan terms, the Cottons would have incurred $85,000 in interest costs over the extended period, on top of the $55,593 they would have paid under the existing loan, their court filing shows.
Theodore O. Bartholow III, a lawyer for the Cottons, said Wells Fargo's actions contravened the intent of the bankruptcy system. "When it goes the right way, the debtor and mortgage company agree to do a modification, go to court and say, 'Hey judge, modify or change the disbursement on my mortgage.'"
Instead, Wells Fargo did "a total end run" around the process, said Bartholow, of Kellett & Bartholow in Dallas. The Cottons declined to comment.
Goyda, the Wells Fargo spokesman, denied that the bank had not notified borrowers. "The terms of these modification offers were clearly outlined in letters sent to the customers and/or to their attorneys, and as part of the Payment Change Notices sent to the bankruptcy courts," he wrote by email.
Goyda said that "such notices are not part of the loan modification package, or part of the documentation required for the customer to accept or decline modification offers." He added, "We do not finalize a modification without receiving signed documents from the customer and, where required, approval from the bankruptcy court."
A Section on 06/16/2017