Complaint Review: Ocwen Loan Servicing - West Palm Beach Florida

I have just been reading some of the complaints about Ocwen listed here.  I had never heard about this company until I was informed that our mortgage had been sold to them at the end of 2010.  We made several mortgage payments to them with no problem, until Feb. 2011 when we were informed that our mortgage payment was being increased due to an increase in our city property taxes.  Well, since I knew that there had been no such increase, I went online to look at our account.  What I found was just amazing - Ocwen had paid property taxes on someone else's house (taxes that were higher than ours) and was using this "tax increase" to demand that we pay an increased mortgage amount.  I couldn't believe it - it was so obvious that they had the wrong property because the city parcel number for our property was totally different from the property whose taxes they had paid!  I just knew that some type of escrow fraud was done by Ocwen - they had basically gone into our escrow account, paid someone else's city taxes, and not paid our taxes at all!  Then, they were trying to get us to pay a larger mortgage amount based on their fraud!

I tried through calling and faxing Ocwen's customer service, tax and escrow departments for months, to get them to admit what they had done. I kept getting the run around, and being told that I had to prove that the city taxes that they paid were paid on the wrong house! Somehow all of this (in their eyes) was our fault! After I sent them documents from the city tax department, they finally changed the parcel number to reflect our property.  But they still were balking at reimbursing our escrow account, and paying our city taxes.  So, I got my congressman's office involved, and they were able to get those things done.  But - Ocwen was still insisting that we had to pay the increased mortgage amount that was based on their fraud, and started sending us default letters that said that our payments were past due! We had never stopped paying our usual mortgage amount, and they applied all but one of the payments to our account.  That one payment was put into a suspense account, and not counted toward our account.

Well, I then decided to get RESPA involved, which is the HUD department that deals with escrow fraud.  I let the congressman's office know that I appreciated their help, but I was so mad that I was contacting RESPA. So now, some nearly 6 months later, Ocwen is being forced to comply with the demands that RESPA has imposed upon them - to restore our account to our original mortgage payment amount, cease all default/foreclosure letters, remove the late fees that are on our account, and explain how they paid someone else's taxes from our escrow account!  My husband and I were so afraid that our house would be taken away from us. 

We are always going to be on our guard with Ocwen - I think that they are a very evil company that preys on people illegally to get their houses.  We have decided that they chose us because we had some problems paying our mortgage on time with our previous mortgage company, and they figured that we would be prime candidates for their tricks. I wish that there was some way for us to get another mortgage company.  I do know that we are going to get the right to handle our escrow account ourselves, and document all proof that we are paying our mortgage payments on time.  We will always pay by check instead of online.  Hopefully that will keep Ocwen from saying that they never received our check.

Please - anybody who is battling Ocwen - contact your congressman and RESPA immediately to help you.  We don't have any money for lawyers, but we knew that we had to get some type of assistance in this fight.