JP Morgan-Chase answers before Congress.
It looks like all the people that were taken advantaged of got to have their say including Captain Jonathon Rowles.
Under terms of the SCRA, provisions are made to cap interest rates on home mortgages for active-duty military personnel. In a lawsuit filed on behalf of Jonathon Rowles and his wife, Julia, JPMorgan Chase is accused of continuing to charge the couple mortgage rates that exceeded the cap after Rowles joined the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and was called to active duty.
What I also liked was that in the session it was called for those that represented to take personal responsibility rather then corporate responsibility. But what comes next is priceless.
In her oral testimony before the HVAC, Mudick said JPMorgan Chase assumed “full responsibility” for the SCRA violations, characterizing the alleged 4,500 cases of mishandled interest rates and 18 wrongful foreclosures as products of human error. She said lack of internal training left many Chase employees with little, if any, knowledge of SCRA regulations and the intricacies of military documentation, saying that “military orders are sometimes hard to comprehend.”
In response, Rep. Tim Walz, I-Minn., produced his iPad, upon which he exhibited a simple one-page set of military orders. In contrast, he held up a Chase credit card agreement spanning dozens of pages. He called Mudick’s statement “the weakest testimony I’ve ever heard in this committee.”
Yea, you cannot say what is complicated when then things that you give out to your customers is more complex.
Committee Chair Jeff Miller, R-Fla., summed up the proceedings. “Our nation’s war fighters and their families should not have to fight to keep their piece of the American Dream, while they are on foreign ground defending that fundamental right for all of us,” he said. “While I am heartened that JPMorgan Chase Bank is attempting to fix these errors with respect to wrongful foreclosures, and is refunding over $2.4 million in excessive interest charges, more must be done to ensure that this never happens again. I hope this is a wake-up call for the entire financial services industry.”
Hopefully this is the last that we hear about this, but I am afraid that it will not be.
Category: Military issues, Veterans Issues, Veterans' Affairs Department
“Hopefully this is the last that we hear about this, …”
I would like to hear more about the penalties that will be assessed. Prison for every employee that signed off on falsified legal documents. Civil penalties against supervisors (personally) and against the company (corporately). Reprimands for the judges that oversaw the legal proceedings. ….I’m sure that there are more penalties that could be doled out.
I wrote a book on this subject and have a few copies laying around if anyone knows of a JAG lawyer or pro bono attorney who nees a reference book.
Yea, well Spork their not the only one’s to have their say in front of Congress in the last month.
http://streetsweeperchronicles.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-twenty-year-war-started-congressman.html
[…] I would like to present Capt. Jonathon Rowles and how he challenged Chase Bank over home loans and related interest rates. He did this in a professional mater that his cause was taken seriously. When you are taken seriously people listen to you. It may not be flashy but itworks. […]