Kwaku Atta Poku was living the "American Dream" - emigrated from Ghana, drove a cab, started a small cab company, bought a townhouse and paid it off quickly.
And then one day some investors showed up looking at his house, telling him they read it was going to be sold at foreclosure.
And sure enough, it was...
In October of 2000, Mr. Atta Poku bought a townhouse in Columbia, Md. and got a mortgage from Bank United, which was merged into Washington Mutual Bank in March 2001. In May 2001, he went to a Washington Mutual Home Loans office and refinanced his mortgage - no cash out - to take advantage of lower interest rates. Everything seems to proceed as expected for the next few years.
And then the investors started showing up in February 2005...and Atta Poku received a letter from a couple of lawyers representing Washington Mutual saying that they were foreclosing on the house.
Washington Mutual claims they didn't receive the money for the first mortgage - from Washington Mutual. (Well, there's more to it than that, but I'm getting there.)
Atta Poku got his letter about the foreclosure on February 10. The foreclosure took place on February 17. The house was sold out at auction on March 19 for $200K by an investor who subsequently resold it.
Atta Poku, struggling to keep his head above water, could not afford to file a "supersedeas bond as required by Maryland law" to insure against loss to the opposing party and thus his appeal was not accepted. The foreclosure was upheld in August 2006 and he was subsequently evicted from the property, and has also been billed rent for his use of the property from March 2005 through August 2006.
Since the foreclosure was declared to be final, any pending action involving this property is considered by Maryland law to be moot, as I understand it, and a subsequent appeal was denied.
Yesterday, some aspects of the case were argued in front of Maryland's highest Court, and a decision is pending.
It is believed that the money was embezzled by the now-in-Federal-prison owner of a now-defunct title company and never was actually transferred from Washington Mutual, the home loan company, to Washington Mutual, the bank. Being difficult to impossible to get their money from the person who actually stole it, they found it a lot easier to go after the homeowner.
See the excellent series at the Baltimore Sun.