Is Your Home Never Safe From Predators?

A federal judge last week rejected JB Mortgage Company’s claim that the owners of 400 homes in Georgetown's Crystal Knoll Terrace neighborhood, which is in northeast Georgetown, owed it more than $60 million because of a lien on their titles that was part of a decades-old foreclosure.Statesman

The mortgage company sued the homeowners in the Crystal Knoll Terrace neighborhood near Georgetown in 2015, claiming the Georgetown school district had illegally foreclosed on the land in 1990 for unpaid taxes before it was developed.

The foreclosure violated a federal statute because the federally run Resolution Trust Corp. — which owned the land at the time after the original owners defaulted on a loan — didn’t agree to it, the lawsuit contended.

The government sold the loan that the owners had defaulted on to a private company in 1996, which then passed it on to other companies before it was sold in 2009 to JB Mortgage, according to the suit.

JB Mortgage claimed in the lawsuit that Crystal Knoll Terrace homeowners were liable for the $5.2 million loan plus the 10 percent interest that had compounded on it since 1990, making the total amount more than $60 million.

Luckily, the judge used common sense in ruling against the mortgage company.

It appears the mortgage company was trying to collect "free money" from the homeowners or the title insurance companies. In either case it should be classified as a scam.