Groundhog Day
Friday, February 2nd, 2024 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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41F and overcast on this Groundhog Day morning!.. which means there are no shadows!
Yesterday, weatherwise, was so warm and sunny, I saw a guy on a motorcycle in a short sleeved shirt!
But that doesn't count!
Also, the weather was the only good thing about yesterday.
I'd gotten kind of a late start, and was immediately disappointed to see no email response from the BMO lawyers... i.e. no payoff demand, or other needed information.
I did Zelle money into the BMO account for the main mortgage.
But I was procrastinating about paying the other bills.
Then Yvette started barking from the living room, and at first I thought she was barking at one of the cats, but then I heard a banging on the door.
I got to the door just as the man was giving up, and I peeked through the window to see who it was... because we get a lot of scammers going door to door around here.
This guy looked like, Dog, the bounty hunter, and he looked mad... holding an envelope as he got back into his car.
I'm 99% certain this was a process server with a summons related to the foreclosure!
And it just scared the shit out of me and left me rattled until I left for work.
I was still upset at work, and right after clocking in, Bernice told me the art teacher had complained that I didn't vacuum her room the night before.
But the night before was a science fair and I had to spend an hour taking down tables.
Meanwhile they had not only blocked the door to her room with a flatbed full of science fair stuff, but had also locked the door.
I had taken that as a sign to stay out of the room, because perhaps there were delecate display items in there or something.
So now I was angry and wanted to give the art teacher a piece of my mind, but she was holding a class.
So, I suddenly felt very overwhelmed with emotions and told Bernice I was too upset to work today, and left.
I did explain to Bernice, while getting my coat, that I had been served a summons and my house was being foreclosed on, but I left very quickly and drove back home.
Back at home I of course walked Yvette, and we ended up in the back yard, with both cats.
As I said the weather was lovely, like a spring day, and the cats were both out there rolling around in the dirt, in the rays of the sun.
And I started crying, watching them do that, because I do not want to lose them, or this house.
Chantele called to ask what was going on and I explained the situation, saying to her, "I'm scared."
That triggered sympathy with her, because Chantele came originally from Laos and escaped some kind of civil war there and... well, has been through some truly scary shit in her life.
She told me to take a deep breath and relax and all of that.
Basically I got the day off with her blessing, but I didn't get paid because I have no PTO at the moment.
Later on in the evening there was some talk on the sibling chat.
Kevin said that I do want to get that summons because it's going to have information that I need.
I printed up a sign and put it on the front door, directed to the process server, saying that the Ring doorbell had been damaged in the cold and to call my numer. I further said that if my car was not in the driveway, I could be found at Cloud Elementary... and I left the address of that.
I then called the lawyers who'd sent the letter that tipped me off to the foreclosure, and left a detailed message with them.
After that, I went into my journal from May of 2022, to look at my notes from when Dad and I had received the first letter warning of a balloon payment.
That first letter had us scared that a balloon payment was coming due in June of 2022.
But when we went there to talk to a personal banker, by the name of Stephany, she told us the following...
- The HELOC would not reach maturity until June of 2023
- All that meant was, Dad could no longer draw funds off it.
- There would be no balloon payment due in 2023. The payment would just go up from $60.00 to $100.00.
- Dad would have TEN MORE YEARS to pay off the HELOC!
This is exactly why I stopped thinking about the balloon payment, and was not expecting it at all in May of 2023!
Stephany basically reassured us both, in May of 2022, that there'd be nothing to worry about until 2033!
So now I want a copy of that original contract, to see what the terms really say... because either Stephany LIED to us... or BMO is lying right now!
I got to bed early and got a good night's sleep, and then got a call from that defense lawyer around 9AM.
I told her I was asleep but please call back at noon, if it wasn't inconvenient... so I'm expecting a call soon.
I also paid off all the minimums on my credit cards, and made my car payment this morning.
So as of today, everybody's paid and happy.
There was a response from the BMO lawyer in email today, but all it said was, I will get you a payoff demand soon.
So, because they are being such ass hats, and will probably not take a credit card payment, my plan is to spend that money on my own lawyer instead, because this shit is escalating extremely quickly, and I can't cut through their bullshit by myself.
Okay, the law office of... I'll call them, "Bantam & Associates" called me just now, and I spoke with a receptionist.
I have an appointment to do a consult with one of their lawyers, Nichole, in one week... on FRI FEB 09, at 1PM.
Between now and then, I am waiting on that payoff demand from... I'll call them, "Quanto & Associates"... the BMO lawyers.
I'm also waiting to be served the summons, which will have information me and my lawyers will need.
I also still have to get started with the loss mitigation application.
But I'm into February safely, billwise, and I still do have enough credit available to get me... through the spring at least... if need be.
So, it's a very scary February, but as far as I can tell, I'm in no immediate danger, and I'm mounting a defense against BMO's attack on the house.
I probably won't write over the weekend, so this 2AM post script to Groundhog Day is justified.
You'll pardon me if I sound a bit nutty, because... it is late, I have been under some stress, and I have been drinking.
But I'm starting to think there may be something to the idea that the balloon getting triggered last May really WAS a computer glitch!
Firstly, we have Stephany, a personal banker for BMO telling Dad & I in May of 2022 that the HELOC will hit maturity in June of 2023, which means he'll no longer be able to draw off the line of credit.
But he will have 10 more years to pay off the balance.
This makes sense, because this is what Kevin had told me about HELOCS back in October, that you can use them like a credit card for ten years, and then... whatever balance you have becomes amortized and you have another ten to pay that off.
This still doesn't explain why the letter we got in early May of 2022 warned of a balloon payment.
So maybe Stephany was simply confused about how the 2013 deal worked, because... as Kevin had told me, ballon payments are a thing of the past that banks no longer do.
Still, she's was a professional, who worked for the bank in question, and had had, by that point, a couple weeks to look into the matter.
She wasn't just talking off the cuff.
And I was wondering at the time if she, or somebody above her whom she'd consulted, had possibly changed things in the system to give Dad a break.
Letter warns of balloon... personal banker says no balloon... just amortization with 10 years to pay off the balance.
I think they fixed it for Dad... and something... some glitch... reverted it back?
Recall that back in May, when I went to pay the monthly on the HELOC, it said the minimum was $13K and some change.
But when I hit the button to pay... to see what would happen... the page reported an error, saying something like, minimum payment exceeds payoff balance.
The portal itself thought it was asking me to pay more than was owed... and DID say this was an error.
I had a REAL reason to think it was a glitch because of this... in addition to what Stephany had told us a year earlier.
So maybe it really WAS a glitch!
If dad had survived to May of 2023, the two of us would've went to the branch office to talk about it and... it may have been discovered that yes... this was indeed a glitch... and they'd have fixed it.
But because dad had died, I had to first work through all of that red tape, and nobody ever bothered to see if it was a glitch.
Instead, they just removed the HELOC from the portal altogether and began sending only paper statements with the last known minimum payment, as generated by the computer.
I had been thinking about the glitch theory most of the shift tonight.
But I had also been thinking the next song I need to do a lyric video for is called, Snow Song and that I needed to fetch my old archive drive from upstairs to get a series of photos I'd taken in 2004 of downtown Aurora after a big snow... to use in the video.
I did bring that archive drive down tonight, and went through some of my oldest shit from the early 2000s.
And I found a folder with blogs I'd written on MySpace, back in 2006.
And going through a few of them, I re-read, and recalled the saga of a computer virus I had back in 2006, that nobody believed was real!
But because I was in the very unique situation to have had two identical PCs, with identical hardware... one of which was my main PC, and the other, just in a closet... never used...
I was able to prove that I was right!.. and save my data.
The issue with the main PC was, it suddenly refused to boot one day.
So I reinstalled the OS, and got it to boot.
And then, I installed antivirus software, but it failed to run.
The antivirus software just froze on opening and never worked.
On the next boot, the OS again would just fail to start.
I tried all kinds of workarounds... with different hard drives and floppy discs.
But after several experiments, I came to the conclusion that it was a virus that HAD to be stored in the flash ROM of the mother board itself.
It could copy itself into either the C drive, or any floppy in the A drive... at boot time.
From there, it would infect the OS, so that on the next boot, the OS would fail to start.
It was quite sinister!
But because I had an identical machine, what I did was... I got that machine up and running with a working antivirus perfectly.
Then, on the bad machine, after another reinstall of the OS and the one good boot... I copied my files onto CDRs instead of floppies.
My theory was that the virus... living on the mother board... would not save itself onto a CDR, because it was an old virus, written in a time when CDs were read-only.
Basically, it targeted the A and C drives, but not the D drive... because it didn't see D drives as possible to write to.
In the end, I put those CDRs into the new machine, and copied the data onto the new hard drive... and presto!
No more issues booting and the antivirus software worked fine!
Because these were identical machines, and the only thing I'd done differently with the new machine was to introduce files from the old machine via optical, rather than magnetic media...
It proved that there really was a virus on the old machine that could or would not copy itself onto media in an optical drive.
I salvaged all the data off the bad machine in this way... reinstalling the OS to get one good boot, and then filling up more CDRs.
And when I was done, I pitched the old machine, along with the hard drives I'd used with it.
And I never had an issue again.
Again, the theory was that the virus had saved itself onto the motherboard ROM, which was flash ROM... same as any thumb drive you'd have today.
And then on boot, it would copy itself to to the hard drive, where it would infect the OS and... first disable any AV software from running... and then possibly delete a critical system file or two, to prevent the OS from starting a second time.
But everybody thought I was crazy.
I had a friend back then who fancied himself quite the hacker, who also told me I was crazy... and looking back, I now wonder if he wasn't the guy who did it!
Maybe not... who can say, all these decades later.
But it was fortuitous to find this old blog tonight, from another time in my life where shit was just going haywire in a way that nobody believed... and my theory that it was a bug was correct!
What's been happening with BMO and that HELOC has continually shocked everybody.
It spooked the loan officers from Discover.
It shocked the loan officers from AmeriSave, who were certain it would not be an issue.
It has thrown Kevin, a loan officer himself, for a few loops.
Colleen, just last night was saying in text, she still cannot believe they'd foreclose on 14K.
And Sheila, eternal optomist, has been gobsmacked at every step of this drama.
Add in that Stephany, the BMO personal banker in 2022 described nothing like this, ever possibly unfolding... and you have the definite fingerprints of a glitch!
Was it created by a hacker?... or was it, as I think more likely, created by some unholy marriage of AI and human error?
I intend to get the people in power to ask this question, and investigate it.
I am going to be drafting a timeline of all pertinent events, drawing from contemporaneous notes... as a document for the defense, to be read not only by my own lawyers, but the prosecution, and... if it comes to it, the judge.
That timeline is going to highlight the unusual aspects of this situation.
The big flag is that Stephany described a very different 2023 from what unfolded.
But there are other flags to consider, such as the fact that there was no death bed warning from Mom.
She would not have been concerned, if she thought the HELOC didn't have to be paid off until 2033!
And then there is just the general shock of all loan officers involved.
All of it points to an error having been made.
This never was, and still is not my debt.
So my argument is not one of... a man who took out a loan he could not make good on, and is begging for mercy.
I am a man who inherited a debt, which to the best of my knowledge, I had ten years left to pay down... who was blindsided by an unreasonable demand... and has been hampered by red tape and slow moving cogs, in my effort to resolve the situation.
I also have squatters rights, because I've lived here over nine years, and have been maintianing the property and paying the taxes.
Okay, that's where my head is at on Friday night, going into Saturday morning, as February 2023 begins.
I'm going to spend the weekend in the studio, and staging the documentation for the timeline.
I'm going to put together the timeline over the work week, in advance of my first consult with Bantam.
And... junebugs willing... I'm going to turn this thing around in February.
Wish me luck!
°¦}
