Written by Biloxi
After an investigative report by NBC News of JP Morgan Chase overcharging thousands of soldiers' mortgages and foreclosing on their homes, the bank make changes and amends for its treatment of military soldiers on mortgage loans. This week, Chase rolls out a new program effective April 1 for the soldiers according the Chase's website:
• Lower the mortgage interest rate for active duty military to 4 percent (2 points less than required by law).
• Start an enhanced modification program for anyone serving in the military after Sept. 11, 2001. Yes, over the past decade. This program will be for anyone delinquent or having problems paying the mortgage.
• Set up a special 24-hour hotline staffed by experts.
• Refuse to foreclose on any active-duty military personnel.
• Donate 1,000 homes to military families and veterans over the next five years in conjunction with its non-profit partners.
• Offer more jobs for veterans.
• Will form an alliance with other major corporate employers to commit to hire 100,000 military and veterans in total over the next ten years.
JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon expressed regret for the bank's mistakes. Mr. Dimon said, "This company has a great history of honoring military and veterans, and the mistakes we made on military foreclosures are a painful aberration on that track record. We deeply apologize to our military customers and their families for these mistakes. We cannot undo them, but we can take accountability for them, fix them and learn from them. Today we want to begin a new way forward with the military and veteran community to make serving them a core part of how we operate our business every day. Our servicemen and servicewomen deserve nothing less."
Unfortunately, Dick Harpootlian, the South Carolina lawyer who is representing some of the servicemembers mistreated by Chase responded to Chase's new program for the troops:
"When I was prosecuting cases, I never had a defendant who got caught breaking the law that didn't want to give back what they took and promise to lead a better life."
JP Morgan Chase has admitted that it overcharged 4,500 soldiers and wrongly foreclosed on 18 of them and said to reimburse over $2 million to the troops and get back the homes of troops or settle with troops that lost their homes.
After NBC news report of JP Morgan Chase's scandal, Bank of America has announced that the bank will create a new program to assist those active duty soldiers. Why would Bank of America now announce a new program to help the troops? Maybe it is because Good Morning America host George Stephanopoulos received an email from a soldier who had problems with Bank of America:
I received an email last month from Sgt. Keith Oliver – a soldier currently deployed in Iraq. He told me that after Bank of America had reduced his payments for two years the bank suddenly came back and said he owed about $19,000 or else he would face foreclosure.
He kept calling the bank to explain he was deployed but Oliver said he bounced from one department to another until finally he contacted us at “GMA” to ask for help.
When we called Bank of America it quickly realized the error and fixed the situation with Oliver.
As you can see, JP Morgan Chase is not the only bank that mistreated the military soldiers.
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