ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Months after Bank of America wrongly foreclosed on a house Warren and Maureen Nyerges had already paid for, they were still fighting to get reimbursed for the court battle.
So on Friday, their attorney showed up at a branch office in Naples with a moving truck and sheriff’s deputies who had a judge’s permission to seize the furniture if necessary. An hour later, the bank had written a check for $5,772.88.
“The branch manager was visibly shaken,” attorney Todd Allen said Monday, recalling the visit to the bank last week. “At that point I was willing to take the desk and the chair he was sitting in.”
After the moving company and sheriff’s deputies get their share, the Nyerges should receive the rest of the money this week, ending a bizarre saga that started when they paid Bank of America $165,000 cash for a home in Naples.
About four months later, a process server handed Warren Nyerges a notice of foreclosure.
“This is a big mistake,” he recalled saying. “You must have the wrong house. We bought a foreclosure and don’t have a mortgage.”
That started 18 months of frustrating phone calls, paperwork and court hearings. Whenever Nyerges called the bank, representatives told him to “come up to date” with his payments. When he called 25 different law firms, none would take the case. When he went to court, the lawyers for the bank filed incorrect motions and were woefully unprepared.
“It was mind boggling,” said Nyerges. “To try to unscrew the screw up, it’s not as easy as it sounds.” Eventually he found Allen, fought the foreclosure and won, proving he owned the home.
During his research, Nyerges heard that his name got transposed from purchase agreements onto the prior foreclosure.
“I don’t know if that is a fact, because no one really had the facts,” he said.
In September 2010, a Collier county judge ordered Bank of America to pay the couple’s $2,534 attorney fees. But by last week, the bank hadn’t paid up, so Allen got a judge’s permission to seize assets.
In an email to the Associated Press on Monday, Bank of America spokeswoman Jumana Bauwens apologized to the couple about the “delay in receiving the funds.”
Nyerges said he’s still upset. “They couldn’t even spell our name right in the apology,” he said.
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