Education & Community

• Planning & Saving
• Credit & Debt
• Forums
• Debtbusters Blog
• Financial Information Blog
• CESI Company Blog
• Community Guidelines

Will someone please think of the parrots? A bank which shall remain nameless apparently doesn’t. In October 2009, they took Angela Iannelli’s pet parrot, Luke, from her home in Pittsburgh, PA. Oh yeah—they also mistakenly repossessed her house, which I guess sort of goes toward explaining why the parrot was taken. Iannelli’s mortgage payments were on time, she says, when a bank contractor padlocked her door, broke furniture, and took her parrot. She’s now suing them for emotional damage, and has since recovered her parrot after multiple calls to the bank. (No word on if the bird was drafted into working for customer service during its’ time there, or if it can now say “escrow.”)

Before you start thinking that Angela Iannelli’s story is the only one like it, think again. With a simple Google search I found five similar stories, three of which are described below:

• The Smell of Accidental Foreclosure is apparently the smell of 75 pounds of rotting fish. Dubbed the “Halloween Horror” by his attorney, October 31, 2009 is a day that will live on forever in the memory of Dr. Alan Schroit of Galveston, TX. Schroit arrived at the house to prepare for a party and found that the locks were changed and the power turned off, meaning that the fish he had stored in the refrigerator from an Alaskan fishing trip had rotted, seeping blood through one of the lower-level ceilings. Despite not having a mortgage or any connection with the bank in question, they foreclosed on his house, more than likely meaning to repossess a house with the same address number down the street. (Obviously, the party was cancelled.)
• Pay in Cash and Think you’re Immune? Charlie & Maria Cardoso paid for their future retirement home in Spring Hill, FL out of their life savings, five years before their bank, despite the efforts of one of its’ own real estate agents to convince them otherwise, seized the house and changed the locks. The Cardosos now have to contend with misplaced possessions, a broken fence, evacuating tenants, and a tarnished reputation in their tight-knit Portuguese community, among other things.
• A Slight Departure:  In another case, an accidental foreclosure occured on a house that the bank didn’t even have a mortgage for. While Denroy Bell was in London, a bank began the foreclosure process on his Kissimmee, FL home. In March 2008, Bell received a call from a neighbor saying that an “army” had arrived at his house to change his locks and drain his pool. The banks explanation: “It's dealing with so many foreclosures in Central Florida that it made a mistake." A costly, embarrassing mistake.

If you’re wondering the moral of these stories, I don’t know what to tell you. My guess would be to buy an incredibly high-tech security system, keep your parrot under lock and key, and your fish stored safely in a freezer somewhere else.