Wells Fargo Mistakenly Cleans Out Retired Couple’s Home Twice
Gee, it used to be only the narcs who got the wrong address. Now it seems the banksters and their vulture hirelings have taken up the practice and done them one better.
The “contractor” in particular should be prosecuted for this. This is criminal negligence and depraved disregard for the law. The other criminals, the ones who wear suits, should have to pay through the nose.
“Too big to fail?” Our country is too big for these blood-suckers not to fail.
Alvin and Pat Tjosaas, a retired couple in Woodland Hills, Calif., had the bad luck of having their home mistaken for a neighboring foreclosed home and being cleared by contractors hired by Wells Fargo — not once but twice.
A retired bricklayer, Alvin Tjosaas, 77, was the caretaker of his late parents’ two-bedroom home in Twentynine Palms, about 200 miles east of his home in Woodland Hills, north of Los Angeles. He is a part owner of the home with his sisters.
Alvin Tjosaas visited the home every four to five months, he said, for maintenance and to work on hobbies in the garage.
“He just loves it up there,” Pat Tjosaas, 75, said. “He was in the process of getting ready to re-plumb the house, so he had lots of his tools up there - just a garage full of tools that any man would die for.”
But on June 1, a neighbor in Twentynine Palms called the Tjosaas family, asking if they had authorized people to clear out their home.
“We assumed it was a break-in and, really, it was a break-in,” Tjosaas said. “They weren’t legally supposed to be there.”
Tom Goyda, vice president of corporate communications for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, told ABC News the company had foreclosed appropriately on another property near the Tjosaas house and the error was made when a contractor mistakenly went to the Tjosaas house instead of the correct house.
The Tjosaas home had actually never had a mortgage or lien on it because it was paid for in cash as it was being built about 50 years ago.
“We are deeply sorry for the very personal losses the Tjosaas family suffered as a result of their home being mistakenly secured and entered by a contractor hired to address a different nearby property,” the company said in a statement. “We moved quickly and have been in contact with the Tjosaas family to resolve this unfortunate situation and right this wrong.”
Once the neighbor called, the Tjosaases called the police but were not able to drive to the property immediately because they were attending their granddaughter’s wedding.
When her husband drove to the property three days later, she said the workers said they were authorized to clear out a foreclosed home. Finally, the sheriff came and escorted the workers to the intended location, 10 acres away, she said.
“Alvin was left to sit among the ruins of the house,” Tjosaas said of her husband.
She later learned the contractors had used a satellite photo and an address given to them by Wells Fargo.
“They simply were at the wrong location,” she said, “not even on our road.”
