Cancer Patient Says Wells Fargo Evicted Her In Spite Of Court Order; Wells Fargo Says It’s Not To Blame

Image courtesy of (TheTruthAbout)

According to a petition that now has more than 114,000 signatures, a breast cancer patient in California claims that Wells Fargo and the sheriff evicted her from her home of 20 years at gunpoint. Meanwhile, the bank says it wasn’t involved in the

From the petition on Change.org:

Niko has owned her home for almost 20 years — and has lived there since she was a child. She never even had a mortgage with Wells Fargo, and has entered into a civil suit around the fraud they have perpetrated against her, fraud that goes back many years. After she filed bankruptcy, the court sided with Niko and put a stay on Wells Fargo’s eviction.

Niko posted the court order on her front door. Despite this, officers from the Sheriff’s Department along with Wells Fargo employees harassed her on several occasions. Finally, on October 10, 2012 officers broke into her home and forcibly evicted her.

The petition is addressed to Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf and seeks to return Niko to her home.

However, when reached by Consumerist, a rep for Wells Fargo tells a different version of the story:

Wells Fargo works very hard to keep homeowners in their homes whenever possible. In the case of Ms. Black, Wells Fargo is the trustee for the trust that owned the mortgage loan secured by her home. As the trustee, we perform certain administrative duties on behalf of the trust, but we are not responsible for making servicing or foreclosure decisions. Those decisions are made by the mortgage loan servicer, which in this case is Carrington Mortgage Services, LLC.

Ms. Black defaulted on her loan in August 2009. Carrington made numerous offers of assistance over the past three years, which included a loan modification, relocation assistance, and agreements to various stays and continuances. Even with those efforts, keeping Ms. Black in her home unfortunately wasn’t possible in this case. We have been in contact with Carrington and received confirmation that (i) the foreclosure and eviction were both performed lawfully and professionally, (ii) there was no automatic stay in place at the time of the eviction, and (iii) during the foreclosure process and before the eviction, numerous attempts were made to help Ms. Black.

We’ve now reached out to Carrington for comment and will update if we hear anything back.

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.